Au Gold Corp Enters Agreement to Acquire Havelock Gold-Antimony Project in the Heart of the Victorian Gold Fields, Australia

Vancouver, British Columbia – January 15, 2026 – TheNewswire - Au Gold Corp (TSXV: AUGC) ("AUGC" or the "Company") is pleased to announce that it has entered into an agreement (the "Agreement") with Leviathan Gold Australia ("LGA"), a wholly owned subsidiary of Leviathan Metals Corp (TSX.V: LVX), dated January 12, 2026, to acquire (the "Acquisition") a 100% interest in the 11,663 hectare Havelock Gold-Antimony Project ("Havelock", or the "Project"), located in the heart of the Victorian gold fields in Australia, half-way between Bendigo and Ballarat. Highlights of Havelock: * Shallow, undrilled epizonal and mesozonal gold +/- antimony targets * Historical production from multiple small-scale underground workings with recorded gold grades between 1 – 10 ounces per ton * Antimony reported in historic underground workings * History of coarse alluvial gold (nuggets) on the property * Excellent access with year-round exploration potential Marc Blythe, AUGC’s President and CEO stated, “Recent success at Fosterville (Agnico Eagle), Sunday Creek (Southern Cross Gold) and Costerfield (Alkane Resources) has highlighted the potential of Victoria’s epizonal gold-antimony deposits. At Havelock, mining in the 1880’s recovered high-grade gold-bearing quartz reef with abundant stibnite (antimony sulphide) at one of at least seven workings along a 9 km trend within the project area. This historic mining has never been followed up with modern exploration programs or drilling. We are very excited to start exploration, including testing high priority gold-antimony targets at Havelock”. Epizonal gold systems, such as those mentioned above, have created high-grade gold deposits that are now a focus for modern exploration. Significant antimony with gold in this part of Victoria is regarded as a reasonable proxy for epizonal gold mineralization. The Company has agreed to pay LGA, an arms length party, C$75,000 and issue 5 million shares of AUGC for a 100% interest in the Project. In addition, AUGC will pay per ounce payments for future resource definition – see “Transaction Details” below. The Acquisition is subject to acceptance for filing by the TSX Venture Exchange. About the Havelock Gold-Antimony Project The Project is located in the heart of the Victorian goldfields near Maryborough, roughly halfway between Bendigo and Ballarat and about 1.5 hours drive from Melbourne, Australia. Paved highways and roads, along with gravel tracks provide year-round, ready access to all areas of the Project. Land ownership is a combination of government (Crown) land and private property. The first discovery at the Maryborough goldfield was made on this property in 1853, with nuggets and alluvial gold, which led to small scale hard rock mining. Water pumping and processing technologies were rudimentary during this period and mining generally targeted high grades above the water table. Two significant gold-bearing structural trends cross the property with numerous historical workings evident. The first is the Shaw-McFarlane Trend ("SMT"), which comprises about 9 km of intermittent small scale historic workings with recorded multi-ounce per ton gold production in the late 1800’s. The SMT has had minimal modern exploration and most targets have never been drilled. In 2010, a local landowner had a water storage dam excavated on their property (situated in the central part of the SMT) and a metal detector operator reportedly recovered 514 ounces of gold, including 23 kg of gold bearing quartz material from the excavation. Management believes the dam excavation intersected the top of a gold-bearing quartz vein (reef) that has never been explored historically or drill tested. The samples shown in Figure 1 were obtained from the dam spoil material, located at 5,904,195 N, 746,275 E (GDA94 Zone 54). Samples were identified as gold-bearing, first by metal detector response and then visually. Individual sample weights varied between 0.238 g and 3.07 g. The reader is cautioned that the sample selection process described above is designed to identify high-grade samples which may not be representative. The disclosure is included because these samples will be used as a vector to guide future exploration activities specifically at the dam target. The gold-bearing samples were delivered to On Site Laboratory Services, located in Bendigo, Victoria by LGA. On Site Laboratory Services is a NATA accredited laboratory, certified as compliant with ISO/IEC 17025 (2017) – Testing. Samples were assayed using fire assay with gravimetric finish (Code PE01S). Results were reported as parts per million and subsequently converted to percent gold content. LGA did not report QA/QC protocols and no blanks or standards were added to the sample stream by LGA. On Site Laboratory Services added one standard and one blank to the sample batch and these samples returned values within industry accepted standard deviations. There is no relationship between On Site Laboratory Services and the Company. The second structural trend is the Leviathan-Mariner’s Trend ("LMT"), which covers 3 km of historic workings. In 2021, Leviathan completed an 8-hole diamond drill program along a 270 m portion of the LMT targets. The drill program returned significant results from 4 of the 8 drillholes, justifying further work. Historic underground mining reached a maximum depth of 500 feet (152 m) on the SMT and 900 feet (274 m) on the LMT, limited by mining techniques and the presence of ground water. Mesozonal and epizonal gold systems are known to have depth extents of more than 1,000 m at other locations in Victoria, highlighting the potential below these historic workings.