$RNX: My transcript to the very good PDAC 2019In case you missed it, on March 19th 2019 I wrote the transcript to the very good RNX PDAC 2019 Stockhouse Events Resource Investment Online Conference:
Mark Selby:
«My name is Mark Selby I am the president and CEO of RNC Minerals, we trade under the ticker RNX on the TSX. I am very glad today to talk to you about our two key assets. Our first and primary focus right now is our Beta Hunt Mine in Western Australia where we made the very exciting Fathers Day vein discovery in September which was one of the richest gold discoveries of all time and captured global attention all around the world.Our second asset is very well timed for the emerging EV market, our Dumont project is the largest undeveloped nickel cobalt project and we believe it will be perfectly timed to deliver the nickel and cobalt that the EV sector is going to be demanding in the very near future. I’ll spend the next little while talking about Beta Hunt Mine and the tremendous exploration potential that we see for the asset. So first off, there are very few new large gold discoveries in low risk jurisdictions. We are in the middle of the Kalgoorlie gold area that has produced over 85 million ounces during its lifetime. If you want to find big gold mines you need to find them in regions that have produced a lot of gold and our mine is perfectly well situated right in the heart of that Kalgoorlie gold camp and all that infrastructure that is in place. Secondly, in terms of the Fathers Day vein we pulled out 25,000 oz from the size of most persons living room. It averaged about 150 oz a ton and to give you an idea of just how great, how high grade the material was that we processed, we’ve got our specimens here at PDAC where we’ve had pretty much a steady line up all day. Most of that gold came out of about 2 tons of rock and that kind of density you’re talking about an 8 person dining table that is about a meter thick, that graded about 40% gold. The key thing and the reason we bought this asset back in early 2016 at the bottom of the market when very few people were looking to pick up any assets and we were able to turn, at that time if was a $0.15 stock and a 20 million $ market cap into exposure into two producing assets. This is a 45 year old nickel mine but as they were exploring and drilling for nickel we inherited 700 km of drilling which basically hit the top of what we believe our 4 shear zones across a 4 km strike length. So again, its not 4 km of good geology or 4 km of an interesting anomaly with a few drill holes. These are gold intersections across 4 km strike length. We know from seismic work done in the past that those structures continue for another 3 km, but again there has been no drilling done on those to date. Those shears are vertical so when you’ve highlighted the top you’ve got a pretty good chance of exploring them at depth and we’re in the structure called the Lunnon Basalt. We are the first company to mine gold in the structure in the camp which is why we’re able to make this Fathers Day vein and discovery which hadn’t been made before and so again, we think these have the potential just like in the Abitibi just like in the Timmons camp to continue for at least one or two km at depth. The potential for a very, very large gold resource. The nice thing about this is it is not just a pure, what we think a multi million ounce gold potential but because it wasn’t an old nickel mine, there is a 5 km ramp system today which would cost you nearly 400 million $ to put in place just sitting directly above the gold deposits and where they start. Today if you look just at our stock chart, I’m sure many of you think geez I whish I had owned this back in August when we were a $0.09 stock and a 30 million $ market cap, at todays prices you’re looking at, we’ve traded at anywhere in the range 215 to 350 million $ recently and that is less than the infrastructure already in place. As we find this resource, we have the infrastructure to turn it into cash very quickly. So, unlike a standard exploration play where you’re going to have several years of drilling, followed by several years of feasibility studies, a few years of permitting, some time for construction and sometimes 6-7-8 years later you’re going to see cash flow from the resources that are drilled off because these gold structures sitting adjacent to all of this infrastructure we’re going be able to turn it back into cash very, very quickly. The most exciting part of the entire story again is this Fathers Day vein, so when we found it, we referred it as a once in a lifetime discovery, but the very, very exciting part for this is there is a sediment structure that is 150 m below the ramp that was put down 2 billion years ago with the rest of the rock in the area, so it is literally continuous throughout the property and intersects each of our shears about 150 m down below where the nickel mining had occurred in the past. So, if you think of a tube that runs through each of these shears for several km, there is the potential in that tube to find more high-grade gold. Eric Sprott said it pretty nicely just after he picked up the shares back in early September, he said either these guys are luckiest people on the planet that they hit the only 5 meters across all those many, many km of shear plus sediment or they are going to find a lot more high grade gold and what has been exciting for us is through these first two drill releases that we put out as part of the 40,000 m drill program that we are finally able to get under way with the cash that we raised from the Fathers Day vein. In these first sets of drilling and our first sets of drilling on Western Flanks, the Fathers Day vein is what we call on our A Zone shear, we are now testing where the Western Flanks and the sediment structure intersect. In the first set of drilling, we hit a 7600 gr. per ton intersection, that is the highest grade gold intersection since 2017 and over the last four years only Brucejack and Fosterville have had higher grade gold intersections. So, we think very good company and I think speaks to the potential of what Beta Hunt could ultimately look like. In subsequent drilling we’ve had 2200 gr. 8 meters away from the 7600 gr. intersection. Just below the Fathers Day vein we hit 1400 gr. again. So, we’ve been able to hit these high grade structures multiple times and we look forward to being able to mine these sometime during the second quarter and we’ll see just how many ounces can come out during that period of time. So, again Beta Hunt we think is one of the most exciting gold stories to come along in a long time. There has been very few large multi million ounce potential discoveries made in low risk jurisdictions and we’re right in the heart of the Australian gold camp and then thirdly, the high grade potential of this asset, we know we’ll see whether, how it stacks up against what we’ve discovered so far. Within the market value today you basically get a free option on what is the largest undeveloped nickel cobalt project in the world. Dumont is a fully permitted, shovel ready project, once the feasibility study update is complete which will be sometime during Q2. All that is left is to put the financing in place. Given the strong market sentiment around the EV story and the market recognition that nickel is going to be the key just because of the volume of nickel, it is the biggest metal by weight in an EV battery, that we’re going to see a very strong nickel market over the next 5-10 and 15 years. Robert Friedland did a conference last week down at BMO and called nickel the new gasoline. We’re lucky that we basically got the largest deposit that is ready to go. So, Beta Hunt and Dumont we think two very good reasons to own the stock and look forward to have you come aboard as shareholders with us.»