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The base and precious metals markets are heating up. And one junior exploration company is taking a fresh look at two high-quality projects in world class mining districts with proven geological potential.
Vancouver BC-based
Rockridge Resources Ltd. (ROCK) (
TSX-V.ROCK,
OTCQB: RRRLF, Frankfurt: RR0,
Forum) is a mineral exploration company focused on the acquisition, exploration, and development of mineral resource properties in Canada, specifically gold and copper. The company's projects include the Knife Lake Copper Project located in Saskatchewan and its core Raney Gold Project – strategically located about 110 kilometres southwest of the prolific gold district of Timmins Ontario.
In this exclusive video Q&A podcast, Dave Jackson of Stockhouse Media recently caught up with company CEO Jonathan Wiesblatt to get shareholders and investors up-to-date on the latest and greatest hits from Rockridge.
SUMMARY BELOW:
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
JW: Yeah, absolutely. So I started my career off in the financial services industry as a sell side equity research analyst. I covered a number of sectors, partially covered resources way back when, so I have some really good analytical experience in the resource sector. From there I moved over to the buy side, and I've been managing money professionally ever since.I worked on a number of strategic alternative asset classes, a long only mutual fund for a very well-known resource commodity shop here in Canada, Sprott Asset Management, which is now called NinepointCapital Partners and from there I moved over to a very large family office.
My background is predominantly in financial analysis, portfolio management and capital markets. So let me tell you a little bit about Rockridge and a little bit about the company. The company went public by IPO back in December of 2017, they raised some capital to acquire the Raney Gold Project in the Porcupine mining district in Ontario. Jordan Trimble, who is currently the president of the company and is one of the founders of the business. The company acquired its second project, which is now our core flagship asset in 2018 called the Knife Lake VMS Copper Project. We have an option agreement with Eagle Plains resources And now we expect the company to earn a hundred percent interest in that project by the end of this calendar year. So that's just a very brief snapshot in history of the business.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your Rockridge shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19?
JW: Yeah, so luckily for Rockridge, the global health issues haven’t really slowed the company down. In fact, 2021 has been our busiest year yet. We conducted a comprehensive airborne VTEM geophysical survey over a large portion of the Knife Lake Project in Northern Saskatchewan. We identified several new and exciting targets through this program, which we followed up with the very first regional diamond drilling program outside of the Knife Lake native deposit area, just this past winter and our drilling program comprised of a 2100 meter program for 12 drill holes. 10 of these holes were drilled at a new target area called Gilbert lake. Never before has there been any real significant exploration outside of the deposit at Knife. The other two holes that we drilledwere at the Knife Lake deposit area. These were infill and expansion drill holes.
SH: For investors, let’s take a deep dive into your two flagship assets – Knife Lake in Saskatchewan and Raney Gold in Ontario’s Swayze Greenstone belt…
JW: Sure. So let's start with the flagship asset, the Knife Lake Copper deposit in Northern Saskatchewan. So Knife Lake is an advanced stage copper product with some silver, zinc, and cobalt credits. The deposit lies in the Flin Flon - Snow Lake mining district, which is one of the most prolific Greenstone belts in the world. The project has infrastructure nearby, including power lines at its southern border. It's in close proximity to other known deposits and mines owned by larger and well-known production and development companies. The deposit was discovered in the late 1960s. So we've known about it for quite some time. It's been worked over by a few other companies in the past, over 300 drill holes to date have been drilled at the deposit and about $20 million hasbeen spent historically on the asset.
The Knife Lake deposit contains an NI 43-101 resource of 3.8 million tonnes indicated at 1.02% CuEq and 7.9 million tonnes inferred at 0.67% CuEq. It's very important to note that the deposit’s very close to surface.We believe the Knife Lake deposit is a remobilized portion of what is a potentially much larger primary VMS deposit and most VMS systems occur in clusters. So we don't believe that Knife Lake is a one-off.Up until early 2021 none of the regional targets to the Knife Lake deposit had ever been systemically explored. We flew an airborneVTEM like I mentioned earlier in the discussion, so we flew that airborne in February. We followed up on some highly prospective targets in March for the recently completed 2100-meter diamond drilling program. Most of the meters that we drill during this program were to the west of the deposit, about five to six kilometers away.
The target area is known as Gilbert Lake, and we just put out a first batch of results last week. I'm sure we're going to discuss those in just a few short minutes and then the second asset in the company, the legacy asset, is the Raney Gold project. This is a high-grade earlier stage gold project located at 110 kilometers Southwest of Timmins, Ontario in the Swayze Greenstone belt. This is a part of the Abitibi Greenstone belt, as many will know and understand, and in this part of the worldit hosts some of the most prolific and world-class gold mines in the world. So Raney's located approximately 35 kilometers Northeast of Newmont's high-grade Borden Mine. We own a hundred percent of this asset. We conducted a very successful exploration program early in 2020. We followed it up later in in the fall of 2020, and really have putthe project just on the back burner while we focus our time, our efforts, our resources on Knife Lake. So that's a good overviewof the two assets inside the company today.
SH: You just recently acquired additional mineral rights through staking and expanded the drilling program at Knife Lake. Can you expand on these initiatives?
JW: Yeah, so based on some initial visual mineralization that we saw in the first few holes drilled at Gilbert this past winter, we were encouraged enough by the preliminary indications that we decided to increase our drilling program from 1600 meters to 2100 meters. We also increased our landholdings through staking. We staked an additional 35,000 hectares or an increase of 70% to our total landholdings bringing the total to approximately 56,000 hectors. It's one of the largest land packages of any junior base-metal mining company in the province. We're super excited to have that much land to go out and explore.
SH: Can you walk us through the recent press release announcing the first batch of drill results from the recent drill program at Knife Lake?
JW: Absolutely. So we've received results back for the first eight holes completed at Gilbert Lake North and South and recall these are the regional targets that have never been systemically explored. Gilbert's just five to six kilometers to the west of the Knife Lake deposit and covers a 15km long prospective trend. Several holes at Gilbert Lake South intersected, encouraging VMS style mineralization. The host lithologies are interpreted to be the same stratigraphic horizon as the Knife Lake deposit. We also did some infill drilling at the Knife Lake deposit, which was a follow-up to our 2019 program. So on a copper equivalent basis, our best hole in this batch of results intersected about 2.34% copper equivalent over 14m. There's also some silver, some cobalt, and some gold in that drill hole. So we are still waiting on the final holes from the program. The final three, we are expectingin the short term and are very excited to release them to the market. What I really want to get across to the market and to your audience is that this regional target, Gilbert Lake, which has never been drilled before, we are seeing some highly encouraging mineralization, although lower grade, we believe we are hot on the trail for the next significant discovery at KnifeLake.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect at your Knife Lake and Raney Gold projects?
JW: Given the encouraging results from the winter spring program, we're working towards a follow-up exploration program this summer. We expect to continue advancing the exploration initiatives in and around the Knife Lake deposit, including the several identified targets. We do plan on going back to Gilbert Lake, in addition to some of the other high quality targets thatwere surfaced afterthe airborne geophysical surveys from earlier in the year. So Knife Lake and Raney, they are two excellent foundational assets to grow and expand the business around given the underlying strength of the base metals complex. We're really open to evaluating new and creative opportunities that will compliment our already very exciting assets in the portfolio. So always very eager to keep our eye on anything interesting that we can add to our portfolio.
Even though we had encouraging results at Raney in 2020, the project has taken a minor pause in order for us to maximize our efforts and our resources at Knife Lake for now. We do not have anyfinancial obligations atRaney nor any holding costs.We are content to re-evaluate our plans there at some point in the near term and we are talking with other companies on potential optioning or joint venturing it out.Investors can expect all eyes focused at Knife Lake and advancing the development there. There's a very nice deposit at the project. We believe we are moving in the right direction to discover additional copper resources at Knife. So with copper prices trading ator near all-time highs, improving market conditions as demand outpaces supply, we see that as being reallythe real catalyst and the focal point for Rockridge.
I should also point out that base metals market in Saskatchewan has really heated up as of late. A company to the south of us, Foran Mining (FOM), just recently had a hundred million dollar investment in it by Toronto-based Fairfax Financial. Fairfax is not really known for its investment in the resource sector, but recently piled in a hundred million dollars, which I believe was approximately 25% of the market cap at the time the investment was made. So they're really shining a new light on the base metal sector inthat part of the country. It’s a reallyexciting time to be an operator and exploration company in Saskatchewan and, and in the Flin Flon - Snow Lake mining district.
SH: It would be remiss of me not to mention your stock has had a bit of a roller coaster ride over the past 12 months. 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?
JW: Sure. So I don't think that the volatility in ROCK shares is necessarily isolated to Rockridge but more of a trend that I've observed across the junior mining sector in general. We've seen the large caps and mid caps catch a bid throughout the run in metal prices over the last 12 months. I'm going to put on my portfolio manager hat for just a second, I think a lot of this has to do with the broader construct of the markets at large and the larger proportion of capital that spans its way into passive pools of capital and many of those pools that I'm referring to have restrictions on the size of companies that they can add to their funds orto their ETFs. However, I believe this will eventually trickle down to the juniors.
We believe that if we continue to do our jobs well, advance our projects at Knife Lake and Raney, and drive shareholder value, the stock will take care of itself. So if you look at valuation and the way that we can look at Rockridge at a CAD $11 to $12 million mark cap, it's total enterprise value per pound in situ on a copper equivalent basis is currently around 5 cents per pound. If you look at some of our peers, our North American copper junior peers, some trade at multiples of that metric. So we do believe that there is a tremendous amount of upside for our shareholders and for prospective new shareholders, as we start torerate and fill that gap getting closer to the peer group. It’s exciting time to be an executive and employee of a great company with great assets and, you know with a low price and a low relative valuation, there's a tremendous amount of upside.
SH: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond, and what retail and institutional investors should be looking out for?
JW: Rockridge has a strategy of working in geopolitically favourable jurisdictions in well-known mining camps and on projects that have been previously underexplored. We are really good at finding assets with historical exploration that haven't been exposed to any modern day exploration, methodologies, or techniques. So for the near term, 2021 investors can expect us to continue to drive value at Knife Lake. Like I said, the focus is going to beat the KnifeLake project in Saskatchewan.We're planning a follow-up drill program now to the spring campaign. I've given those very encouraging results that we started to show the market last week and as we move into 2022 and beyond, we'll continue to work on our core assets and will not hesitate to look for other complimentary assets to the portfolio.
SH: Can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management and board teams, along with the experience and innovative ideas they bring to the gold and copper exploration space?
JW: Yeah, absolutely. So our exciting assets aside, the most valuable part of the company is its team and its board. The company's founder, Jordan Trimble, has done a tremendous job of puttinghigh quality people in and around the organization. So there's a great wealth of experience, including technical expertise and capital markets as well as managerial experience. So let's start with our technical expertise, which is the real lifeblood of our business. Rick Kusmirski is a director of the company. He's a former exploration manager of Cameco, just a small uranium company based in Saskatoon, and I say that facetiously as they're one of the largest in the world. Rick's real expertise is in Saskatchewan, he brings over 40 years of experience to the team with a real focus in the province that we're currently operating in.
So he's a real valuable part of the board and quite active in the operations. Grant Ewing, P.Geo, is an advisor with many decades of experience developing mostly precious metal assets here in Canada. He's been an executive on a number of companies that have been acquired by larger companies at significant premiums. So he's also a great asset to the geological team. Todd Keast is a P.Geo that oversees our exploration activities at the Raney gold project in Ontario. Then there's TerraLogic. They're a reputable geosciences group that we use to advance Knife Lake. TerraLogic has a team of very seasoned geologists that are well-equipped to provide and support our exploration activities at Knife Lake.
I have to mention one of our strategic advisors and that's Ron Netolitzky – a Canadian mining hall of famer – as he's been responsible for a number of discoveries here in Canada and was actually part of the team that discovered Knife Lake back in 1968. We're really pleased to have him as an advisor and part of the team and then I will mention, Jordan Trimble, who I've discussed a couple of times on this call. Jordan is a capital markets professional and entrepreneur. He's been working in the resource sector for the last 12 years and just has a wealth of experience in building and managing very successful resource companies. So it's a great team. I'm really excited to be part of it.
SH: And finally, Jon, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked the floor is all yours.
JW: I think that 2021 has already got off to a tremendous start. We've really seen the base metal and the copper markets start a long march higher. We saw $4.80copper all time highs. So being a junior resource company focused in the copper sector in Canada, it's a really exciting time. We have a great asset in Knife Lake with a great deposit that is currently being undervalued by the market. We're sitting here witha near surface copper resource as well as a highly prospectivegold exploration play in Ontario. So for a $11 to $12 million market cap, there's a tremendous amount of potential upside for our shareholders.
For regular updates, visit
rockridgeresourcesltd.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.