TD Upgrade to $10.00 TargetSolaris Resources Inc. (SLS-T) C$6.90 The Growth is Just Getting Started
Event Yesterday morning (see our initial thoughts here), Solaris announced a significant new discovery in maiden drilling at Warintza West and that the first detailed geophysical survey covering its Warintza project has revealed a more extensive porphyry system than previously understood.
Impact: POSITIVE
The company is now expanding its drill program to 12 rigs (from six) to accelerate resource and discovery drilling at Warintza Central, West, East, and South. The first hole drilled at Warintza West, targeting surface geochemistry before the receipt of geophysical results, returned a long interval of copper porphyry mineralization.
SLSW-01 returned 798m of 0.31% CuEq, including 260m of 0.42% CuEq, from 32m depth, with geophysics later revealing that this interval lies outside the high-conductivity anomaly (Exhibit 3). As a reminder, the median grade for open-pit copper discoveries over the last two decades is ~0.37 g/t Cu.
Moreover, a continuous high-conductivity volume encompassing Warintza Central, East, and West, was defined by the geophysical survey with dimensions of 3.5km long x 1km wide x 1km deep (exhibits 2/3). At Central, the anomaly correlates closely with high-grade primary mineralization at depth.
In our view, Warintza Central continues to demonstrate the potential to become a large, high-grade open-pit copper porphyry deposit, at a time when the global diversified mining houses (BHP and Rio Tinto) have all indicated that new copper discoveries are required to meet the upcoming estimated supply gap.
With strong copper pricing momentum intact, an anticipated pro-mining Ecuadorian government (page 2), and lots of news flow given the expanded drilling program, we believe that today's price represents an attractive entry point for clients. TD Investment Conclusion We believe that Solaris is in the early stages of making multiple discoveries among its cluster of porphyries on the Warintza property. We expect the stock to continue to re-rate higher as the company demonstrates the growth potential of the project.
We are maintaining our SPECULATIVE BUY recommendation and increasing our target price to C$10.00 (from C$8.50) on a higher NAV estimate and multiple that reflect the recent promising exploration results and rising multiples in the sector, given the ongoing strength in copper.