Looking for a multi-million ounce gold opportunity in elephant country? Enter
Angold Resources Ltd. (
TSX-V.AAU,
OTCMKTS: AAUGF,
Forum) boasting four highly prospective properties in its balanced portfolio…including two in Chile and others in Nevada and Canada. And with rising gold prices, the value opportunity has never been stronger.
In this exclusive video Q&A interview, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson was joined by President, CEO, and Director of Angold Resources Limited, Adrian Rothwell, to tell us about his company and update our investor audience on all things Angold.
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
AR: Well I'm based in Western Canada as is the company headquarters and I'm a CPA by training. So perhaps come with a few different business perspectives than some others in the mining sector but I've worked in this sector now since 1995 and really attracted to the big wins in discovery. I've worked for small and large companies but really, it's these small companies that I enjoy the most. I also realize that it's a difficult sector to build a business with all the boom and bust cycles. Most recently I've focused on founding companies with resilience to these cycles and businesses that are really leveraged to the bull cycle in gold which I believe we're in now. So Angold was attractive to me in that respect, and I joined the team in September last year. Since then we've been adding to the portfolio of assets, which builds a little bit of resiliency in the space. We listed December 31, 2020. So really, it's a new listing in this context but it isn't a new company, as we've spent the last few years with the team, Board and Advisors to acquire a portfolio of projects. The best time to acquire projects is when the market's down, you know, you get them quite inexpensively, which we did. Currently we're focused really on two jurisdictions in this portfolio. One is the Maricunga, which is the gold belt of Chile, and the other one is the Battle Mountain trend in Nevada.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your Angold shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19?
AR: Yeah, sure. COVID obviously has added protocols, which we have done. It has changed the way all of us are working. We have a very distributed team, in the US, in Canada and in Chile, and each of these teams is headed by a senior geologist who has basically project teams working within the country. I haven't been able to travel to Chile since joining in September last year, but I have been to the Nevada project, and we just completed a drill program in Chile. It affected us a little bit in terms of just having a slightly larger camp, some social distancing protocols, people working in bubbles, but we were able to execute, and we successfully completed our drill program. So on that front, it hasn't really affected us a great deal. Perhaps a little longer in terms of timeline to execution but not materially so. For me, in particular, marketing has been all digital and online. Personally, I can't wait to get back to the face-to-face meetings, meeting with our investors and brokers and institutions.
SH: You started spinning drills at your Dorado project in the Maricunga of Chile back in February. Can you update our investor audience on any results to date?
AR: Sure. Yeah, It's winter down in Chile right now and the Maricunga project is at about 14,000 feet above sea level, which is high but not unusual for the Maricunga. Most projects are around that height in this part of Chile. We’ve recently demobilized the drills at site, but we have left our camp up there, so we're able to mobilize very quickly in the spring. We completed the first phase of core drilling for 4,300 meters and that focused on an area called Lajitas, which is the historic resource zone at the Dorado project. And we successfully achieve multiple objectives in the program, obviously checking the quality of previous drilling, stepping out from historic drill holes as well by up to up to 150 meters along strike and around the same at depth but also being able to look at structure.
Historically nearly all the drilling was RC (Reverse Circulation). So we expanded the previously drilled deposit, and the drilling indicated definitively that this is a Maricunga style porphyry and epithermal deposit. Being pipe-like in structure it's got excellent depth potential and that's going to be one of our focuses in the upcoming drill season. So at this stage, the deposits around 600 meters wide and 450 meters deep and that that's expanded from the average 300 meters of depth from historic drilling. Lajitas is open at depth and the historic resource zone also remains open along a WNW-ESE and a NE trend. We’ve also been doing regional work resulting in multiple similar targets on this property. It's about 15,000 hectares, so it's a large property. We recently completed geophysics as well and this helped to confirm coincident targets through talus fine sampling, rock chip, hyperspectral, mag and IP over the project. This resulted in a compelling new target at Lajitas south and that's a much larger system about 1.2 by 2.2 kilometers and it's only about a kilometer away from the Lajitas resource area. In summary, we've got a camp and roads there, we're planning drilling, so expect some news on that soon.
SH: You’ve recently released some positive assay results from Dorado project in the Maricunga belt of Chile. Can you unpack some of the numbers for our investor audience?
AR: Yeah, sure. So the drill program focused on essentially two things, expanding the resource bubble laterally in oxides as well as at depth in oxides transition and sulfides. Our drill program was mostly shallow drilling. We had drilling depth of up to 647 meters, or about 500 meters from surface given the topography. We've released essays for seven of the nine holes we drilled, and we've hit mineralization in every hole thus far, which is quite incredible. Some holes better than others obviously and these have extended the mineralization as I previously mentioned. We also got a few positive surprises. We've hit a couple of new zones that look like they'll mesh in very nicely into what we'll do in the future in a resource update, but the project needs more testing, And likely after we've done the next phase of drilling. Holes five and six were lost in some swelling clays, but we did end in mineralization in those holes and in fact that's upside for us because it's this is a zone that was a bit of a step out from the historic resource areas. So I'm overall very pleased with drilling. We completed deeper drilling, confirmed excellent continuity of mineralization and further depth potential. So a couple of highlight intercepts. Our first hole was mineralized for almost its entire 540 meter length. The highlighted intercept was from surface 302 meters at 0.71 grams per ton gold and grades were higher than expected. So we expect this to be favorable in future resource updates.
We had 11 intervals of two meters each over two grams per ton, and one of a 4.06 grams per ton. Four grams in this area in a near surface deposit like this is high grade in Maricunga. These are mostly going to be very consistent deposits that are likely going to be run-of-mine style operations. These are inexpensive operations, so we are very happy to get some higher grades. The second hole actually had a nice long intercept of higher grade of 30 meters of 1.04 grams per ton at depth, extending the core of the deposit. So a little bit of an extension and our third hole hit 248 meters at 0.75 grams per ton, that extended mineralization to the North Northeast. Hole four hit some low grade south of the core of the deposit.
We hit two new zones to the west, one with an interval of 84 meters at 0.4 grams per ton. Holes five and six were lost as I previously mentioned but did end in a possible extension zone. Hole seven was another extension to the Northeast about 130 meters and a great intercept at 196 meters at 0.51 grams per ton and pending are holes eight and nine. Hole 8 is about a hundred meter extension to the South Southwest and hole nine around 200 meters to the North Northeast. Excited to get those assays back.
SH: The Company looks set for strong growth in 2021. How are you placed to expand operations to meet this kind of demand?
AR: Well our immediate plans have focused in Nevada on the Iron Butte project, and we've just hired a senior geologist full time, based in Elko (Ken Coleman), so we'll be accelerating the work and news flow of that work over the next couple of months. He's been contracting with us part-time up until now and are very excited to have Ken come on full time. He knows the area well and he'll be an essential part of the team there. Meanwhile our team in Chile is pretty self-sustaining with Guillermo Peralta, our Chilean senior geologist, a critical part of our team there. He's based in Santiago and is currently distilling results from our most recent drill program. So you know we're really poised to be able to expand programs quite easily corporately. We're very lean, easily scalable with our back-office based in Vancouver. I'm also based in Vancouver, and we have a very lean G&A. I've been focused mostly on setting up Angold with the correct site teams above to allow project execution to be scalable.
SH: For company shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect at your four properties, especially Iron Butte?
AR: Yeah, sure. I mean, up until now, it's been a little on the back burner while we've been completing drilling at Dorado, but we have been working in the background with planning structural and alteration mapping at site. We've had a couple of site visits and testing and rock chip sampling and mostly focused around the historic resource zone to get a better understanding of that. That'll feed into our drill planning. We now have a drill permit for up to 10,000 meters of drilling. Our next news from Iron Butte will focus on regional exploration, refining drill targets, doing some geophysics before we start drilling.
We are expecting to commence the first phase of drilling in or around Q4 in Nevada. On the Chilean projects, as I said, it's winter, so we are distilling results from all the work that's been done and there's been a lot of it. Geophysics, rock sampling, talus finds, drilling we've got some mapping programs and we're basically building targets for the next season on Lajitas and Lajitas South and some of other Dorado targets, as well as on the Cordillera project.
SH: I have 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?
AR: Well we've traded into a softer market in January when we essentially listed and started trading. We raised 8 million of financing in September last year when it was a hot market, hoping to see another hot market in September. We did trade down, we traded a large volume of stock, and you know, for me that means we've got a large number of new shareholders, and they're excited to see us execute our 2021 plans and no hangover. We now have a fairly decent foundation after churning through a lot of stock from our reverse takeover and our valuation is compelling. So I'd say it's a good time to get in. I've certainly been buying a little bit in the market and will do so in our next placement. We are tracking Chilean comparative companies very closely. So we also see a pivot to Nevada over the Summer opportunistically. I would expect a positive rerating where the Nevada companies are valued a little higher, they get a little more attention from the market especially upon getting some good drill results from Iron Butte. With four projects (two advanced projects), I think it's a great valuation at around $25-$35 million.
SH: What’s the long-term strategy for the company moving into 2021 and beyond, and what should retail and institutional investors be looking out for?
AR: Essentially our strategy is focused on expansion of the existing resource zones at Iron Butte and Dorado … that's number one. Secondly, both projects, and Cordillera, our second project in Maricunga, provide excellent organic expansion into new targets that have been discovered in 2020 and 2021, particularly at Lajitas South on the Dorado project. So organic growth is one part of the story. In the short term investors can look forward to us drilling. So any further funds raised will be pretty much dedicated towards drilling and exploration work. In the longer term, our strategy is really to build critical mass in Chile and in Nevada and that will then allow us some corporate alternatives for us to consider in the future but for now really, it's about a larger discovery focus on the project 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 exploration and development space?
AR: Sure. Our board consists of Galen McNamara. He's the CEO & President of Summa Silver, Brandon Bonifacio is CEO of NevGold and Rony Zimerman is a well-known Chilean resources attorney, based out of Santiago. With Rony and Brandon (formerly with Norte Abierto in Chile) we've got a strong knowledge of doing business in Chile. Galen and myself more familiar with the US and Canada and I think that's very complimentary, we get along fantastically well as a board. Overall it's a young board providing a little bit of fresh air to the sector. In terms of marketing and corporate development, we have some wonderful advisors as well with Michael Konnert, Craig Parry, and Doug Ramshaw . So, you know we're trying to stay current and obviously with COVID, we've had a digital focus on all of our marketing until now. There's some innovative things we're doing on the exploration side being overseen by Dave Smith, our consulting exploration manager.
SH: And finally, Adrian, if there’s anything I’ve overlooked please feel free to elaborate.
AR: Oh, I think I've probably done enough talking for now, but obviously if this piques your interest, if there's any other questions go to our website our contact information is on there. I'm more than happy to answer any questions from our investors.
For regular updates, visit www.angoldresources.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.