Stockwatch Gold for yesterday Modest results?
Gold Summary for Oct. 20, 2022
2022-10-20 19:08 ET - Market Summary
by Stockwatch Business Reporter
New York spot gold fell $1.80 to $1,628.10 on Thursday. The TSX-V lost 0.48 point to 586.91 while the TSX gold index gained 1.82 points to 230.91. Most Canadian golds had a better day today. Iamgold Corp. (IMG) rose one cent to $1.74 on 3.19 million shares, continuing a modest rebound that began a month ago at $1.26. Lundin Gold Inc. (LUG) did well, adding 23 cents to $9.50 on 184,000 shares.
Ivan Fairhall's Mawson Gold Ltd. (MAW) rose one cent to 13 cents on 242,000 shares. The company rolled out a preliminary economic assessment of its Rajapalot gold and cobalt project in northern Finland today, based on a resource of 9.78 million tonnes inferred at 2.8 grams of gold per tonne and 0.044 per cent cobalt. The plan calls for Rajapalot to yield 706,000 ounces of gold and about 2,800 tonnes of cobalt over a projected nine-year run.
The underground mine, designed to run at about 3,300 tonnes per day, would cost $191-million (U.S.) to build, nearly half of it for a processing facility. With projected production averaging about 80,000 ounces of gold per year once ramped up, Rajapalot carries a promotable bottom line, with an internal rate of return of 27 per cent and a $211-million (U.S.) discounted net present value after taxes.
Mr. Fairhall, chief executive officer, was pleased with his dream sheet. "This is the first project-wide technoeconomic assessment that underpins the significant value of Rajapalot," he jargonized, carrying investors along with a torrent of enthusiasm, adding that "these incredibly robust results demonstrate a clear case for a mine at Rajapalot and bring out its quality fundamentals." Those fundamentals include high mining and metallurgical efficiencies on the gold side and "the production of ethical cobalt to European Union environmental standards."
And what comes next, you ask? Well, dream sheets are followed by various forms of feasibility studies before promoters go looking for construction cash, but Mr. Fairhall never once dropped the f-word while cheerleading his new study. Instead, he talked up opportunities to expand the resource base, noting that the defined bodies remain open downdip, and that the property "remains mostly undrilled."
And so, Mawson plans to "leverage the robust base-case preliminary economic assessment scenario" -- improve upon -- more by expanding the resource than by upgrading the inferred material to feasibility classifications just yet. Mr. Fairhall and his crew do muse about engineering work and baseline studies that would be needed in more advanced studies, but for now, adding inferred ounces appears to be the focus.
Roger Moss's Labrador Gold Corp. (LAB) lost one cent to 25 cents on 120,000 shares on word that it has hit a 1.1-metre interval averaging 30.67 grams of gold per tonne in the Big Vein zone on its Kingsway project in north-central Newfoundland. The interval included a 0.3-metre portion that returned 99.31 grams per tonne, so the other 0.8 metres averaged just under five grams per tonne.
Worse, that was the only high-grade hit of any substance within the assays for six new holes drilled at Kingsway. A hole into the Big Vein Southwest area yielded 4.67 grams per tonne over 1.64 metres, but again, most of the gold sat in a 0.75-metre portion that averaged nearly nine grams per tonne, leaving the other 0.89 metre of core with barely one gram per tonne. That is roughly what a 6.17-metre stretch in a third hole managed. Even so, that 1.27-gram-per-tonne average was better than the three other holes, one at Golden Glove and two at CSAMT, yielded. (All three failed to encounter gold.)
No matter: Mr. Moss, president and CEO, enthused that he and his crew "continue to have drill success at the north end of Big Vein," where several significant intercepts have now been received. To back up his enthusiasm, Mr. Moss points to assays past, including one received in April that produced 6.07 grams per tonne over 19 metres, and another, received in early September, that yielded 2.02 grams per tonne over 32 metres.
Neither of those earlier results did anything to halt the slide in Labrador's stock, which traded as high as $1.85 in mid-2021. That high was largely the result of anticipation that the company would soon find the long bonanza-grade hits that were (then) regularly turning up at Queensway, a rival project immediately to the southwest, being worked and ably promoted by New Found Gold Corp. (NFG: $4.94).
Undaunted, Mr. Moss and his crew are carrying on. They have two drills currently working the Big Vein area, where the mineralization currently has a strike length of 520 metres and remains open both to the northeast and southwest. Expect more assays in the coming weeks, but investors are no longer convinced that a big strike is just around the corner.
George Salamis's Integra Resources Corp. (ITR) rose four cents to 84 cents on 93,000 shares on word that it has drilled a 108.8-metre interval averaging 0.59 gram of gold and 15 grams of silver per tonne at its DeLamar project in southwestern Idaho. The assays, from another 10 holes drilled into the Florida Mountain area, included several other lengthy intervals, including a 73.15-metre stretch that averaged 0.5 gram of gold and 41.5 grams of silver per tonne, but for the most part the other intervals had modest grades.
Mr. Salamis, president and CEO, applauded the past four years of exploration and studying at DeLamar, work that led to a prefeasibility study early this year. That study was based on a reserve of 123 million tonnes averaging 0.45 gram of gold and 23.27 grams of silver per tonne -- about 1.79 million ounces of gold and 92.4 million ounces of silver -- about three-quarters of which could be heap leached and the rest milled. Mr. Salamis, having reached an early stage of feasibility, does look ahead to eventual development, but he also cheers resource expansion plans.
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