Conference Call HighlightsHere is my take on the conference call. It lasted 1 hour, and Mark, Alex and Jean were on the call, but only Mark and Alex spoke.
Mark gave an opening statement. Essentially with this new report they are working to reposition the company from being a low-grade high tonnage opportunity to a high-grade, low tonnage mine. Mark has spoken with many people in the industry and what he found was that high grades on low tons was the most profitable and valued type of deposit. He stated (loose paraphrasing) that he is working to differentiate OX from everyone else in the pack (loose paraphrase). Mark intends to pursue financing ("starting this afternoon") to complete the drilling campaigns on Phases 2E & 2D.
Alex Horvath commented that they are really starting to understand the geology of the site better with these results. Previous reports and sampling methodologies have assumed that the gold was only found in certain geologic structures ("Slate belts"), and as result they often discarded or did not sample the intervening "sandstone" belts. What they have come to learn is that the "sandstone" is also gold bearing. They have also found that there are new fault lines and sheering and they are moving away from thinking of this as a "saddleback" deposit.
The problem is that much of the old core is not available for re-sampling as it was vanadalized, or destroyed and record keeping standards were not as stringent as present. As a result while they have some results for those old cores (pre 2005/6) they do not have a complete picture (only results for the slate sections, not the sandstone sections), and so 96 holes have been assigned 0 g/t as per the NI43-101 requirements.
As Alex pointed out the reality is that every one of those 96 holes did have gold in them, but they are not included in the model for regulatory reasons. There is a stated intent to re-drill those holes (infill drilling), resample them and bring them under the new protocol. Alex basically implied this will increase the resource significantly. [ed. As I've said before the gold hasn't disappeared, but there is a huge hurdle of work to bring all the data under the new NI43-101 standards. The data and record keeping from the past was completed before this standard.] One critical thing Alex mentioned is that their assaying protocol is now starting to approach results which were historically found in the Boston Richardson mine (4g/ton). They view this as extremely positive as they can now be comfortable that they have the "nugget effect" beaten.
Other key points during the Q&A:
- Mineralfields representative lead the questioning and had several follow-up questions.
- Botus(?) / Lotus(?) / Bolton(?) capital was on the call.
- Silver Valley Mining Journal was on the call.
- Current resource estimate is based on an open pit mine, with gold at $750/oz.
- Decision to present a range of grade cut offs was driven by the reality that this deposit may be mined by a variety of different techniques.
- They still haven't found the underlying geologic structures which caused the flow of gold bearing material.
- There is limited data (shallow drilling) on the Phase 2D, and no data (other than really historic) for 2E.
- Phase 2E is the Dolliver Mountain mine, and they intend to drill as quickly as possible as they have some historic data that indicates the same structures are found in the shaft as they've found in the Phase 2A-C.
- The company burns about $30k/month when not drilling. They will have to raise additional funds for drilling.
- Mark reinforced and restated on several occaisions that his goal is to get this property to be a mine as quickly as possible. He however wouldn't be pinned down on a timeline. I believe he stated that he expects to start drilling again shortly (8 weeks or so) and that results would start to flow as quickly as possible and to be in a feasibility study stage next year. When questioned about timelines he did say it was not a 10 year horizon, but very soon.
- Alex hinted that it may be possible to do some work in advance or parallel on the feasibility study.
- Bulk sample was mentioned on more than one occaision, but no details really mentioned
- When questioned about when investors would learn more he categorically stated it would not be 6 months to a year before more info was released, but within a short time line.
- Reasons for the delays were mostly about changes in the geological model and also how backed up the labs were in processing assays.
- There was a question about how mining friendly Nova Scotia is, and any aboriginal land claims (none) which Mark handled and he reinforced this is not in a high-risk location and all of the values of the property (power, water, road access, natural gas etc.) Mark indicated he will be in NS and will continue discussions with the county and provincial governments.
- Full NI43-101 report to be posted to SEDAR soon.
Frankly I think they came clean on many issues and were very forthright. Alex did a great job in verbally presenting (without the aid of any powerpoint slides) a technically complex geological structure such that if you were listening carefully you could understand the issues. Mark did a good job at setting the stage and introducing the situation. I wish he was able to present more details on his financing plans and intentions, however I suspect we'll learn of them very shortly.
Drop in share price reflects retail investors who haven't done real duediligence or were here for short term gains. I'm a self professed long. I was disappointed in at least a few of the questions asked because it felt like a few people had not even reviewed the Investor presentation on their web-site and couldn't visualize the property or the phases. The Mining Market watch article really did this company ahuge disfavour by setting expectations way to high and now the share price suffers in the short term.
Smart money bought today, the short's who were expecting $0.22 sold. I expect we'll start to see a good climb from here. My personal feeling is Mark will get the money (they wouldn't have done this repositioning otherwise) and quite possibly it is all lined up. The 1.1MM oz (All in M&I + Inferred) at 0.5g/t comes close to my expectations, and the fact that when the go to 1.5g/t cut off we get 800k oz really tells you how high quality the deposit is. There won't be any dilution of the value of the company and they are going to go forward to build a mine in the long term.