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“People, project and price.” That’s what one junior gold explorer says is what makes his Company stand out from the pack. And, they pack a punch…boasting a “hall of fame team in the best potential gold district in Canada.”
SKRR Exploration Inc. (
TSX-V: SKRR,
Forum) SKRR is a Canadian-based precious metal explorer with properties in Saskatchewan – one of the world's highest ranked mining jurisdictions. The primary exploration focus is its three gold properties on the Trans-Hudson Corridor in Saskatchewan in search of world-class precious metal deposits. The Trans-Hudson Orogen, although extremely well known in geological terms, has been significantly underexplored to date.
In this lively, informative and entertaining vodcast, Stockhouse’s Dave Jackson was joined by Company President and Director Sherman Dahl to discuss a number of timely and topical areas of interest for metals and mining investors looking for real value and opportunity in emerging companies.
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: So first off, Sherman, can you tell us about yourself and your company, SKRR?
SD: Sure I've been involved with SKRR for a number of years. Originally it was a shell vehicle that we had from a previous mining deal that was done incidentally in Saskatchewan on the uranium side, nothing, you know, positive developed on, on the uranium assets that they are working on. So myself and a gentleman by the name of Ron Netherland, SK-II who incidentally is one of the RS and SKRR and another hall of fame mining gentlemen, by the name of Ross McElroy. So Ron Netherland ski and Ross McElroy, both highly recognized geologists are the geological brilliance that originally formed the notion and the idea that we start to accumulate gold assets in Saskatchewan gold exploration assets. The S K obviously stands for Saskatchewan. So SKRR is how we formed our name. It's no secret that we also wanted something that looked a lot like SSR mining, because they are a $4 billion company with enormous success in the trans Hutson corridor, which is part of obviously the larger trans Hudson orogeny which is a key feature of the geological brilliance of Saskatchewan, which also hooks over into the North East of Manitoba into the snow Lake region.
So that's, you know, the inception of SKRR was a company that was, you know, well-financed from the beginning by a very specific group of mining professionals. And then that married with the geological brilliance of Ron Netherland ski and Ross McElroy. And that was the inception of SKRR a couple of years ago.
SH: Stockhouse metals & mining investors know about uranium, copper and zinc mining in Saskatchewan, but for our audience that might not be that familiar with gold exploration and mining in the province, can you walk us through the jurisdiction…pros and cons?
SD: Sure. I mean, Saskatchewan is, is, is a wonderful place. I mean, many, many of us I grew up in Saskatchewan, so I have a little bit more intimate knowledge with, with the entire province. The Saskatchewan is essentially divided into kind of two regions. One that's probably more, more recognized by especially people from the East end. The West is the prayers and, you know, sort of the flat open sky, beautiful primaries. But if we go a little bit further North into Prince Albert, the whole thing really starts to change. And what it starts to change into is some of the, you know, the most beautiful parts of the world, which become dominated by the boreal forest of Northern Canada and the Canadian shield, the trans Hudson corridor is the, essentially the transects and orogeny, which is a massive mineral or structural system that was developed to pro you know, approximately 2 billion years ago.
A lot of people don't realize that Saskatchewan, you know, 2 billion years ago was a mountain range. And so all of that activity and all of those plates colliding created the trends, Hudson orogeny, which is not really much different than the sort of formations that happened in the Abitibi, you know, in the red Lake areas. And in the golden triangle, we just happen to call ours the transient corridor where they've called it red Lake or Abitibi. Those are really marketing names, if you will, that were placed on geological formations that happened essentially a billion years ago. So the trans Hutson corridor, the transection orogeny slices, you know, right up through the middle of the province of Saskatchewan and in particular near the North it's sort of surfaces in, in, in areas like the CB Santoy deposits and in the very famous Hudson's Bay mineral area, which essentially is Flynn plot. A lot of your investors may not realize that the second largest infrastructure program in the world was in Flint lawn. And the only thing that was larger at the time was the Panama canal. So the amount of mineralization in Saskatchewan is absolutely stunning, evidenced by world-class copper deposits. World-Class gold deposits, better known for uranium, for potash, for oil and gas, you name it. So the whole, no, the gold expiration story is remarkable and, and, and relatively under explored in Saskatchewan.
SH: You’ve said, “The geological setting of the Trans-Hudson Corridor is similar to the well-known Abitibi Gold Belt in Canada, but with one-one-hundredth of the drilling.” What’s been the impediment to exploration here and what kind of a land package do you have in the region?
SD: Well, that's a great question. And I've was probably actually incorrectly quoted. Maybe we were trying to be conservative one day and it's actually more like one-1000th of the drilling it's remarkable. One-100th is actually is very, very low estimate. There's been way less drilling than that, you know, compared to the Abitibi or the red Lake. So if you look, if you took a Google earth, look at the Abitibi or the red Lake, it's stunning, how many mines and gold properties have been discovered in essentially a very, you know, identical kind of Greenstone belt environment. So then we go over to Saskatchewan and you ask the question, well, why, why was there less expiration? Well, there's a couple reasons. One of the key reasons is that, you know, for a number of years, the political ideology in Saskatchewan was extremely socialist. So this was great for the farmers, but it wasn't essentially, it wasn't great for the miners.
So when a mining company, a large mining company wanted to come explore in Saskatchewan, they actually had to partner with the government on an equity basis. That was not, you know, an attractive situation. So a large, a lot of the mining companies grab you. They, they gravitated toward the red Lake areas in Ontario, the activity in Quebec, you know, in British Columbia and the golden triangle. So there was dramatic under expiration because of that in Saskatchewan. A lot of the exploration that ended up getting done was very surface level drilling. So there's enormous amount of gold showings and a lot of activity, but never much expiration at depth. It's actually surprising to find drilling beyond a hundred, 250 meters in Saskatchewan. So where you look at the bigger discoveries at CB Santoy happened at depth. So that's the primary reason. I think Saskatchewan was underexplored for, for many years and all the money got spent in, into some of the other areas that we talked about.
SH: You recently announced pending assay results from drill program on the Olson property are coming down the pike. Can you tell us a bit about the targets here and how soon can shareholders an investors expect to see the results?
SD: The assays that are pending, we expect them imminently, you know, obviously labs across not only Canada, but as I understand it globally are backed up. There is a couple exceptions. I know that drill results on some investments we have in Columbia are coming faster than normal, but in Saskatchewan, the labs are backed up. So we are well beyond where we thought we would have some initial assays out of our 18 hole drill program. So our drill program and the Olson was extremely successful. And in fact, when very smooth, because of the competency of the rock, and we just had enormous success on, on, on the drill side, everything is now in the lab. We would love to see some results before Christmas. But yeah, I don't, I don't think I'm being optimistic in saying that and we have made a corporate decision, no matter what the results are.
We're, we're not going to be batching, you know, a group of holes, which we might normally do. If we get two or three holes out of the lab before Christmas, we, we intend to release those. We're very excited about, you know, the assays, because we had mineralization in every zone that we drilled and some extremely positive looking core, which is available on our website, by the way, there is gallery images of all the core. One thing I would say is that the great thing about the mineralization of the core is that that's the leading indicator that you need to find high grade gold. That doesn't mean that you just because you have the mineralization, that you will have high-grade gold, but if you don't have the indications in the mineralization, of course you have nothing. So we have mineralization in every single zone. And the, and if you look at the core, it's, it's quite stunning, but we do have to wait for the assets.
And so we're, we're kind of caught, you know, by the scientists at this point, in terms of saying, you know, what, the actual grade of the core that we've got. So the answer to your question, we expect assays immediately. And then we anticipate that we're going to be in a fortunate position to be releasing assay results, sort of consistently now between January and February, which is just fine with us. The investors like to see action a little bit sooner, but we've got big plans for Leland Irving drilling. We've got some great plans for expansion of the Olson drilling, but we need to sort of develop the science side of looking at our assays and where do we start drilling next?
SH: Can you give us some ‘boots-on-the-ground’ details of what you’ve accomplished to date at your Irving / Leland Property and Olson project?
SD: Sure. Let's start with Irving / Leland because that's an extremely exciting property. I've been working very closely with Tim Termuende and his team at Taiga Gold. These guys are world class. They also happened to be the guys that are working in the background with us through a company called Terra logic who are fantastic guys to work with in terms of getting a drill program properly done. So Tim Termuende and Taiga have this an amazing property called the Fisher property, which is joint ventured right now with SSR mining. They've spent millions of dollars exploring that property with huge amounts of success. And a lot of it has gone on notice because it's built into Taiga. The symbol is TGC for Taiga, but it's controlled. The operating program is controlled by the much larger company SSR. So the market doesn't get the results as quick as they might otherwise because of having SSR as the operator having said that, right, the side, the Fisher property is the Leland Irving assets.
When all these assets are linked into the same mineralization and shear zones that have are fed through the Santoy deposit, which is the Santoy gap was one of the biggest discoveries and most profitable mines built in Saskatchewan. So both OS that the Leland Irving, and Taiga through the Fisher property are right in the heart of that area, which is moving South from the massive discoveries of the Santoy gal. We, there is historical holes into Leland army. We've been in there recently doing channel sampling, which is essentially drill holes that surface, we already know there's massive mineralization at surface, and even to just adapt, just not super deep as Leland. So we're going to be announcing probably within, you know, within a week. Some of those initial results out of Leland Irvin that combined with the historic data of Leland earnings will tell us where to drill in January, February when we started the winter drill program.
So lunar is it's very exciting and it might've even happened sooner, but we had chosen to drill the Olson property. The Olsson property, we drilled 18 holes, spent a million bucks, extremely successful drill program. I've talked to other mining executives that are working in Mexico and different are our, our meterage costs. And the time that we did that drill program is extremely well. It was extremely well executed by the guys from Terrell logic. Now we're just pending the results. So all 18 holes are in the lab. Some of those holes are actually crushed and, you know, we can digitally follow where they are in the lab, but we just have to be a little bit patient waiting for those assays and, and, and so huge success on the Olsen. 18 holes, million bucks spent. We want to expand that. We need to see the program details of Leland Irving super exciting are being our neighbor is the Fisher property.
We're going to be drilling in, in, in the new year and we will be releasing the Lima results. I can, I can tell you that we do have them. We actually have a conference call today to go over the Leland assays and, you know, the, the actual results out of the winter program at Leland. So super exciting that we're going to be one of the most active participants in the area. SSR obviously is drilling we're drilling. So a mask we'll just announced some really oversubscribed financing they're going to be drilling in the area. So it's, it's exciting times for Saskatchewan right now.
SH: SKRR is nicely cashed-up to the tune of two-million dollars earmarked for drilling, including three-quarters-of-million set aside for spinning drills this winter at the Leland Gold Project. Can you walk us through some of the property highlights here?
SD: On the Leland Irving, you know, the highlights, it's just probably something that I should really defer to Ross McElroy, our, you know, our chairman and he's, he's the really the geological strength behind this. You know, all the properties I can tell you that we will have a lot more to say about Leland Irvin, you know, after today, after we do our conference call, which is with Tara logics to discuss the results that came out of the Leland Irving winter program. And that will set us up for communicating to everybody, exactly where are we going to be drilling at Leland Irving? There is historical drilling on the property. There's a tremendous amount of showings, all…you know, high, high grade, multi-gram type material. But I, you know, we need to learn a little bit more from this, this winter drill program and consult, you know, gentlemen like Ross McElroy to really highlight where we are going to be exactly drilling on that property.
SH: Can you discuss a bit about your experienced “Hall of Fame” management team and the long-term strategy they bring to the company moving forward into 2021 and beyond?
SD: Well, I think it's pretty simple. I mean, you know, I alluded to that at the beginning of this call is that, you know, first and foremost, you know, the investment business and the resource business is really built on the three P's it's the people, the project and the price. So we are very careful about selecting the right people. So Ross McElroy, huge track record in Saskatchewan, Ron Netolitzky, huge track record in Saskatchewan. So though the geological brilliant had to be there, then we searched for, you know, essentially the right capital markets people, you know, I've got an extensive experience in the capital markets. There's other people that are on the board and advisory board, Mike Halvorson, who I've been doing business with for years, also extremely capable in the capital markets side. He's the chairman of Orezone Gold. Craig Roberts is on our advisory board.
So we really married strong capital markets, people with geological brilliance on people like Ross makeover and Ron Netolitzky. And then also in the background is we have a very strong marketing team that can tell the story. So we've got the right people, we've got the right projects in Saskatchewan is probably the second or third largest landholder in Saskatchewan. Now we've kept our share structure extremely attractive. So we only have, you know, approximately 40 million shares outstanding. We've got cash in the bank. So we think that our market cap just on our land package alone is undervalued. We start having discovery holes in these known mineralized areas. It's just a matter of time. It's not a matter of if we have a discovery, it's a matter of when, because of the size of our land package. Obviously, we can't guarantee that, but you know, we do, we know that these deposits aren't one-off deposits.
That's not the nature of the mineralization in these areas. If you look at the Abitibi, the Red Lake, there's multiple minds in these greenstone belts, they don't just have one mind. You just have to find the structure and find the, you know, the tennis ball in the haystack, if you will. So you know, we're super excited about it and we don't see this as a short-term project. We'd love to have great initial results and we have had great initial results, both on the surface and within our core. Now, you know, I think it really is coming down to getting these assays and depth and working the areas like Leland, like Irving Lake Olsen, no different than SSR mining is doing or mass folds are going to be doing. And I think we're all super positive on Saskatchewan and hope to announce a discovery in the coming months.
SH: What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it’s a good buy right now?
SD: Well, I think there's a couple reasons is, you know, you, you want to buy a company that has the proper share structure like we do and has tremendous upside, you know, for the people that are coming into the, in, into the story because of the size of our land package and the quality of people that are able to bring additional finances to the table. It's a really, it creates a lot of buffer zone for the investor. We have, like I mentioned earlier, a second or third largest land package and in Saskatchewan, we're actively drilling we have in the bank. So I think, you know, it's hard to put valuations on land packages. But I think when you, when you take the combination of all the people, all the projects and that the price that you're paying for it, it really makes SKRR an attractive entry point at that this share price.
And, you know, we're comfortable where we're at. You know, we, we did all of our financings at, or below this price level. We've got a tight share structure. We've got all the assets in place now we just have to deliver on, on the assays and, and, and I would discovery. So I think it's a wonderful entry point. You know, I, it's tough to put a value on, you know, what we, what we think the size of the prizes. But if we look at some of the benchmarks, you know, you develop, you discover another Santoy Gap, we're talking, you know, hundreds of millions of dollars worth of value. And again, I don't think it's a matter of if there's another deposit, it's just, where is it and where is it in the structure? So I think we're, I think we're very good value at the current price level, which is why I've been buying.
I've been an insider buyer. And you know, we're, we're just like any other investor we're patiently waiting for the, for the assays and how do we go? How do we, you know, where do we go from here? What's super exciting is that you are seeing more investment coming into the area. Mass gold is, is evidence. SSR is evidence. And I know there's other players in the background watching what we're doing, that don't have the money that we have, and haven't been able to execute drill programs. So we, we think there's going to be a Saskatchewan is going to be interesting in 2021, very similar to what's happening in Newfoundland where Craig Roberts calling Cattell and the guys at newfound gold are also actively drilling in, in new, exciting areas in Newfoundland. We're doing the exact sort of same thing in Saskatchewan.
Well, having cash in the bank when you're entering into any exploration project, that is good news, indeed. And not only the cash in the bank, but certainly the people that can spend it properly.
SH: And finally, Sherman, if there’s anything else that I’ve overlooked and you’d like to add, please feel free to elaborate.
SD: Okay. Well, nothing really to add, just, you know, Merry Christmas to everybody in the investing world. And I do always love to highlight, you know, the wonderful boreal forest that covers Northern Saskatchewan and Northern Canada and it's Ted Olson. A very interesting gentleman that I met in the Flin Flon area told me that the boreal forest is the largest shopping center in the world. So maybe you should send your wife up there, Dave, and she can get you something nice out of the boreal.
SH: Don't tempt me. You know, this has been a wonderful discussion and it's been really enlightening, especially for this part of the world, Sherman. We really enjoyed the time that you spent with us…happy holidays to you and your family, please be well and stay safe.
SD: Yeah, same to you Dave. And, and again, great job by Stockhouse. I’ve always loved spending time with your team. And you guys are doing a first-class job was informing investors and, and it does helps. It helps teams like ours to know that we've got, you know, really good partners that focus on quality and integrity. And that is really what we need to all focus on…not only in business life. So thanks. Thank you to you guys and Merry Christmas to all of you.
For more information, visit
skrr.ca
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.