BERAL, INC.  
Andrew G. Racz  
Director of Research  
300 East 54 Street, 26C  
New York, New York 10022  
Telephone: (212) 319-6949  
Fax: (212) 753-1944  

Midway is basically an exploration company. If anything, the company is involved in two advanced and one early-stage exploration project in Nevada, looking for high-grade gold and silver resources. They are, namely, the Midway Project and the Spring Valley Project.

Basically speaking there are two kinds of gold stocks. One is an established man like Barrick and Newmont Mining and the others, the junior gold stocks. The junior gold stocks so far serve as speculative vehicles but never received particular investment attention. Certainly, they very rarely received respect.

At the end of 2004, I would say that the junior gold mines in the North ameircan continent can claim what candidate Ronald Reagan claimed when some international agreement was reflected back in the United States. Reagan in shirtsleeves hit the table."We do not want to be notified. Hell, no, we want to be respected."

The purpose of this article is such a statement. For the first time in history, in the year 2004, or rather the last quarter of 2004, the junior gold mines may state, "Hell no, we want to be respected." And respected they might be. Take a typical junior gold stock. It is valued on the current asset base of the mine and the current price of gold. If there is no noticable movement of gold, the junior stock after a speculative run-up usually increases.

Let us now break the valuation into four parts. We have a junior gold mine. It has an estimated gold reserve and the price of gold. This is the current value which we call "A". Let's assume that the price of gold now goes from $420 to $480. The valuation changes immediately. We have a number now for the price of the mining stock, called "B". Assuming that the company has contact with junior underwriters, with the higher gold price and the higher price of the stock, the company can raise some money or even more money. Callit price "C".

If the management is astute enough to buy additional reserves or revalue its reserves at a higher gold price, with the additional capital, we now have price "D".

The interesting thing is that "B" is more than "A". "C" is more than "B" and "D" is more than "C". The process itself permits a junior gold mine in the cycle to have more reserves, higher gold price, higher valuation and more cash.

The company has 32 million shares fully diluted outstanding. At $2.00 a share Canadian, it is $64 million Canadian market cap and about $55 million U.S.

In order to analyze any current and future interest in Midway, we have to put the company into a historical perspective. Exploration companies are only popular if, and we use an old-fashioned statement, they are in the right place at the right time under the right circumstances. Let me come to the practical evaluation of Midway with hypothetical numbers.

1. Let us assume that Midway suspects that they are in touch with approximately
   a million ounces of gold in the various places of search.
   
2. The traditional valuation of underground gold is about $50 per ounce, or $50 million.
   
3. The value has inherent leverage if we expect the price of gold to go up. For instance,
   if the price of gold goes from $550 to $700, the valuation ratio will go from
   $50 to $60 and we are talking of a $60 million market valuation.
   
4. If the price of gold goes up and expect it to go up and stay up, we have a potential
   of expanding the exploration, and instead of a million maybe we would be talking
   about 1.2 million ounces of gold.
   
5. Because of the growing interest in a mineral which goes in abstract terms and
   valuation terms, there is always a possibility that a larger company would purchase,
   let's say, 40% of the total project, not at the valuation price of $60 per ounce
   but maybe $100 an ounce.
   

Adding this hypothetical table together an interesting conclusions arises, which we reproduce in the following table.

The Confidence Factor

As we have compiled, Midway started basically with very little money and very little support. As the company gets bigger, in the year 2004-05-06, a number of finances have been completed. This is an extremely important factor in assessing the future of a company. A series of private placements actually is a vote of confidence for the company. A company like Midway moves among what?s called the gold people, people who have knowledge, interest, information in their selected area, which is Nevada, and by providing the capital and seeing the price of the stock going higher is like an interpretation of current and future success.

A list of finances is illustrated in Table 1.

The Historical Background for Major Exploration Success

Like any other industry, the success of a series of projects is not a coincidence but usually backed by historical factors. If we want to talk about gold, the first major discovery was in South Africa at the end of the 19th century. In fact, Winston Churchill in his book My Early Life mentioned that his father and mother were not rich people, and only at the end of their lives acquired a portfolio of South African gold mining shares which helped the family through difficult times. For over a hundred years, South Africa has been an important country for deep mined gold, and it occupies today a vital place in gold and mineral history. To some extent, no other gold depository assets have stayed popular for over a hundred years, which is now culminating in bringing the Johannesburg Stock Exchange public.

Gold was discovered in Australia some fifty years ago. The South American gold discoveries have actually grown in the last 25 years. The largest gold discoveries in the United States and the North American continent were the Nevada discoveries, and companies like Newmont and Barrick have made billions of dollars. A short description of these two companies is in Table 2.

Recently, around September, 2005, a maverick gold executive, Robert McEwen, after making a big success of his former company, Gold Corp, which he built up from a $15 million market cap to $7 billion, suddenly resigned his position and started a new company called U.S. Gold, with the desire to acquire an impressive large territory in Nevada, putting his belief that deep mining in those territories could bring about a major change in his company's history.

After six months in business, the statistical description of U.S. Gold and its holdings, in terms of acquisitions, appears in Table 4.

Since Mr. McEwen could bring a buying power of maybe a billion dollars to his current company, which already has a market cap of $600 million, and because of his demonstrated engineering and financial acumen, he may make Nevada into a Monte Carlo.

There are a number of independent companies such as Midway, whose market cap is $64 million, about one tenth of U.S. Gold Corp.'s market cap, and whose technical expertise in selecting territories is undeniable and are basically saying "I, too, have a chance."

Description of Midway in terms of projects and expectations

Historical Comparison

Mineral discoveries in the world, whether oil, gold, copper or nickel, do not happen in isolation. Major discoveries usually create a whole series of companies that benefit from the trend. In recent history, let me quote a number of examples.

1.    The post-war discovery of Saudi Arabian, Kuwaiti, Middle East oil, which actually        changed the military equation of the world.

2.    The Alaska oil in 1970-71 created great excitement, but because of political factors, so        far it has turned out to be a minor event.

3.    Copper discoveries in Chile for the last forty years created wealth and potential        political pressure in South America.

4.    The Russian oil fields created enormous wealth for a handful of companies and        transformed the entire financial picture of the former Soviet Union, particularly Russia.

5.    The discovered of Diamondfield nickel in Newfoundland, while creating great        excitement, turned out to be a non-important factor in the world of nickel.

6.    Gold discovery in Nevada contributed a large increase in the world's gold production        and, as such, they are starting to play and will play an important role in the monetary        assets of industrialized and emerging countries in the years to come.

All in all, we live in a decade or perhaps a century of commodities. Any mineral discovery which is being sought after by the financial community is gong to play an important part in the field of monetary values.

The Nevada gold really started with the Carlin Trend, which is owned by Newmont. It started in 1965 with a reserve of $3.5 billion and reached $12 billion in 1998. In the interim, Newmont has mined 26 million ounces, representing a revenue total of $8 billion.

The Nevada story basically didn't grow rapidly between 1965 and 1981. This was partially due to the low price of gold and the lack of concentration of production. Production really started in 1982. See Table 5. It's interesting to reproduce the cumulative gold production between
1965 and 2001.

The Growth Years in Nevada

Midway is basically a candidate to benefit from the exploitation of gold production in the Carlin Trend, which represents the main territories for Nevada gold. After 1982, a dramatic rise in reserves began with the discovery of various deposits.

The Nevada and Gold and Silver Production
In evaluating an exploration company such as Midway, we cannot really make any progress unless we look at the entire circumstances which govern the operation. Midway states that the so-called Midway Project has six gold deposits. Inferred Resources estimates further gold zones. In addition, eleven targets have been identified. The Spring Valley Project is an advanced-stage exploration project. It has encountered gold already. The best deal to date encountered 215 feet of .137 ounces per ton of gold. Drilling in late 2004 identified two new gold zones.
Midway is interesting when we look at the entire background within which the company operates, and the economic and political implications of the territory, as well as the value of its gold and silver reserves, in contrast to the total reserves of Nevada itself. The production figures are available for the year 2004, as illustrated in Table 6.

The figures are impressive because our valuation of 7 million ounces of gold at $600, and 10 million ounces of silver at $10, creates a total revenue base of $4.5 billion.

The production highlights indicate that the 7 million ounces of gold make Nevada the third largest producer of gold in the world, behind South Africa and Australia.

The first macro economic factor which we must clearly state is that if the price of gold and silver go up, and in the year 2006 silver is already hitting $10? per ounce compared to $7 about six months ago, the exploration will increase and the production will increase, and of course the profit will increase. We have indicated at the beginning of this report that an exploration company has reserves whose value dramatically increases with the price of the commodity. For any company such as Midway, the skillful utilization of a stock and potential mineral production attracts capital, thereby increasing the potential of the company.

Frankly, we believe that in the next two or three years, companies like Midway not only will sell part of their equity to other larger companies, but pre-sell its reserves to other parties without disturbing the capital structure. Vital in any area, such as in Nevada, are the actual reported reserve figures. In the last two years, the gold reserves in Nevada have increased to 8.3 million troy ounces, compared to 66 million a year before.

If any mineral or mining company can increase their reserves every year after actual production, it is a sign of greater longevity of the mine and therefore increases the value of the common stock of the company they represent. Needless to say, the higher the commodity price silver and gold pose, the more reserves the company can add and have a higher net reserve number, which of course commands a higher stock price.

Midway is a new company. It is in the heart of Nevada and after the initial confirmation of reserves, say a million ounces, it will participate in the growth of Nevada in gold and silver, or maybe copper, along the thesis I have outlined.

Market Conditions

Nevada in the year 2006 will go through some unusual changes. Apart from the major companies like Newmont and Barrick, the entree of U.S. Gold will bring about a challenge that the state has not experienced before. The philosophy of U.S. Gold is that more major fields could be found in Nevada other than what Newmont, Placer Dome and Barrick have found. Furthermore, this gold will be found mainly by deep drilling. U.S. Gold, of course, has access to capital of maybe a billion dollars. It allocated $30M to drilling for the spring season of 2006.

If Robert McEwen, the chairman, is right and gold is discovered in the drilling between April, May, June and July, it would create a speculative fever not experienced in Nevada before. U.S. Gold may have money, or access to money, but it is a small company. When it started it had 30 million shares outstanding, and today it has 95 million shares and covers a territory almost as big as any of the majors in their heydays. Meanwhile, the capital structure of the four companies we have been talking about, namely Midway, U.S. Gold, Newmont and Barrick, are strikingly dissimilar.

See Table 12.

If U.S. Gold is successful in its drilling program, it could set up a Nevada Scarlet Fever like Diamondfield created in Vancouver and Newfoundland in 1994 to 1997. This being the case, promising and successful exploration companies such as Midway could have a sharp increase in the price, maybe even threefold its current price, which would enable it to further financing in favorable conditions and expand its operating base and transform itself into a different company.

This scenario is hypothetical but cannot be ruled out.

Conclusion

If we want to evaluate Midway, one can look at immediate possible reserves of let's say a million ounces, and with 20 million shares outstanding, we can come up with a ratio as illustrated in Table 10. If, however, in two years the confirmed figures increase to 1.5 million ounces, equivalent both in gold, and the price of gold goes to $700, the ratio based on the current capitalization changes meaningfully. See Table 11.

Where management skill is tested is finding the right areas, finding the right reserves, and then utilizing the stock market and personal contacts to leverage by selling either reserves or stocks so that the changing circumstances would create a modified company, capitalizing on the current possibilities, but also include in its price at some stage the forecasted values which we can hope with a certain amount of constructive expectation.

(Article 24 - posted March 23, 2006)

e-mail: mlikar@aol.com

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