RE: PR--Wow.. 1.74 billion cubic feet of GOLD!!!!My thoughts are the expansion in size of the mineralization to an area of 174 square kilometers is quite bullish. We need to expect gold grades to vary all over the map from dry holes to massive mineralization like they saw along the river with grades in excess of 20 grams/ton. A conservative density for sand is 1.5 tons/m^3 so there is roughly 2.61 Billion tons. I am also going to assume a gold grade average of 0.20 to 1.00 gram/ton. Mkuvia (Mbwemkuru) may have 2.61 x 10^9 (ton) * X (gram/ton) / 31.1 (gram/Troy Ounce) between 16.8 million to 83.8 million ounces of gold. That folks is a massive deposit. A conservative future valuation for the company in production is $100/ gold ounce. The future market cap value is between $1.68 to $8.4 Billion. Assume 100 million shares outstanding, leads us to a future stock price of $16.80 to $84.00.
What I do not like in the press release today is it was another cryptic worded document. Douglas is like many micro-cap explorers in that their communication to the market is infrequent and often leaves more questions than answers. A clearly worded NR or presentation of their plans would be a major shot in the arm for investors.
I respectfully disagree with Siempre on the recent run up in Douglas' stock. I do not believe that old longs, like myself, are driving up the price. For one, precious metal investors have been badly beat up and demoralized. I don't think they will put capital at risk for an explorer at this time and bid it up to nearly 100% in the last five weeks. What I do believe is that it is new money that has been accumulating the stock forcing it up higher while general market conditions and in particular, the precious metal market have been absolutely horrible.
We do know that hard rock operations can take years to bring to production. Mkuvia is an alluvial deposit, which means there will be much less capital and equipment required to produce gold. We don't have any details on how they intend on mining Mkuvia. A Falcon concentrator could get them there in very short order. Whereas a heap leach process would take more time with permitting and leach pads.