Given recent events, I had a long chat with Adam today and discussed a number of issues. The recent share price action has understandably led to a lot of frustration and I wanted to share my notes from the conversation as widely as possible.
- Restart of drilling - “We don't expect the suspension to last much longer” is a direct quote. Federal authorities have been very supportive and concerned from the outset that the interruption did not lead to Oroco being negatively impacted. Oroco’s presence is neutral and welcome.
- Drill results - Release of next batch of North Zone assays and first set of results from Brasiles Zone should be imminent. As discussed during the recent MCE call, North Zone mineralization is well understood and drilling that has taken place there is development drilling. Drilling outside of the historical zones has been very encouraging. As per Malte’s comment in the MCE call, there are shallow areas of >0.50% and in some cases >1% grade that they have yet to drill. Drilling of these areas should provide some ‘headline’ grade which they expect will attract increased attention. Brasiles Zone drilling remains exploratory. Given this, they want to release as many Brasiles holes together as is practical to better illustrate the nature of the system and the developing knowledge of it. It is not at all unusual to drill a number of holes before systems like this become better understood and Orono’s technical team have no hesitation in stating that Brasiles remains ‘in play’. The South Zone looks extremely promising with areas having recently been identified close to the surface that appear to have minimal strip which could potentially add billions of pounds to the resource estimate.
- Fourth rig - Richard Lock has informed Adam this week that the plan is for a fourth rig to commence drilling at Santo Tomas within about two weeks of re-start of drilling. Hence, Adam is not aware of any issues with regards to water rights, permitting, etc. as was suggested on some forums.
- Cash position - The company has enough cash in the treasury to complete a PEA. They do not require any additional funds from the exercise of warrants to reach this stage. Of course, later in the year if markets are favourable, they may look to do a small opportunistic raise which would allow them further runway to continue to drill out Santo Tomas post completion of the PEA.
In sum, management are aware of difficulty that shareholders have faced recently with share price performance and halt to drilling. They remain extremely confident that long-term value of the project has remained unchanged and that this will ultimately be realised upon completion of the roadmap that Richard Lock has set out. Next news items to look out for are restart of drilling and release of assays.