With the price of gold hovering in or around the USD$1,800 mark for most of 2021, the time has never been better for exploration companies to discover new mining hotspots. And one Vancouver BC-based company has Canada covered from corner to corner, offering a trio of exciting projects to potential investors.
St. James Gold Corp. (LORD) (
TSX-V: LORD,
OTCQB: LRDJF,
Forum) is engaged in acquiring, exploring, and developing mineral resource properties in Canada.
The mineral exploration and development company recently began diamond drilling at its flagship Florin Gold Project located in the Yukon Territory while also pursuing exploration on its Quinn Lake and Grub Lake Properties in Newfoundland. It’s at Florin in the Yukon where the team is planning to complete a minimum of 7,000 metres of diamond drilling from now until mid-September aimed at expanding the massive 2.47-million-ounce inferred gold resource.
In this video podcast exclusive, Stockhouse Media’s Dave Jackson’s caught up with the St. James Gold’s Chief Executive Officer, George Drazenovic for an update on all the latest and greatest happenings with the company.
(Click image to play video)
TRANSCRIPT BELOW:
SH: To start off with, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and the history of the company?
GD: So Dave, I've been involved in the public markets for a couple of decades in various commodity based resources from cobalt, lithium, oil and gas, alternative energy. In fact, my first job as a C-suite executive was a CFO of a little biotech company that's called Oramed Pharmaceuticals the symbol is (ORMP). Took that company when it was fledgling at pennies and raised $3 million. That was my first job as a CFO and then today that company is worth, I think it's about 800 million us dollars. So yes, that was a long plan but that was my first foray into the biotech space public markets as an executive. Academically, I have the financial designation of a CPA, a professional accountant MBA from University of Notre Dame, a charter financial analyst and I feel fortunate that I was able to be in the structure as a professor and a chair, teaching students pursuing the CFA program. So a breath of experience, but my, but my main role is to find commodities, find discoveries and to monetize them for our shareholders.
SH: Can you update our investor audience and your shareholders on any new company developments, especially in the wake of COVID-19.
GD: So Dave we're lucky, our properties are based in, in the Yukon and in Newfoundland. So we don't have the travel restrictions and maybe other companies may have. Our technical team, our management team for the most part and the consultants we work with equity exploration there's there are a subsidiary of JDS. They're all based here in Canada, so we don't have those travel restrictions. So that's been a for fortuitous development for us but going forward, we're going to be very active, and we can explain and we can talk about this shortly, but we have a work program right now that we're undertaking in the Yukon, a very short season, so we're going very hard at it and we're also going to be exploring our properties in Newfoundland over the next few months, as well.
SH: Let’s pivot to recent company news…you’ve just announced that diamond drilling has begun at the Florin Gold Project in Yukon Territory’s Mayo District, can you tell us a bit more about it?
GD: Sure. So our properties backstop in the Yukon is 22,000 acres. It's backstopped by 2.5 million inferred resource based on geophysical, geochemical evidence, the resources open in all directions both laterally and have depth. So we're drilling, we have a contract with superior drilling to encounter 7,000 meters of drilling. Two thirds of that will be exploratory nature going after these hydrate targets and about one third of that is looking to step out and expand the inferred resource. So we're quite active at this. We have two rigs right now on site, one is a fly rig, and one is a skid rig and we're hoping to have the drilling complete in about six weeks and then an updated resource in the fall. So very excited to talk about that and read in detail but we're active. It's a short season but we're being aggressive and we're quite happy with the developments thus far.
SH: Turning to your Quinn Lake Property in Newfoundland, it appears to be in a great location with a lot of potential. What are some investment highlights here that investors should be aware of?
GD: So our Quinn Lake Property, it's in a sweet spot in central Newfoundland. We're adjacent to Marathon Gold, one of the 900 pound behemoths in central Newfoundland. So we're adjacent to them but what's more important is that we are on trend with their discovery. So there's two geological features that really represent a fertile gold corridor in the central Yukon and that's the Valentine Lake share zone and the Rogers and conglomerate, both of these geological features rests along the discoveries of Marathon Gold and if you draw a line between their discoveries, these geological features go right through our property. So Marathon Gold has the Valentine deposit there that's going to be a mine. You have the Leprechauns and Sprite deposits, you have the Berries Zone, you have all of these other discoveries now that Marathon Gold is encountering through their drilling program and the one feature that is consistent with every one of these is that they are on again, these trend lines that rush student glomerate Valentine's Lake share zone and that goes right through our property. We're very excited. We've got these properties in the fall. It was difficult, it was perhaps fortuitous but we're going to learn from Marathon Gold’s activities and build on that in the next few months. On the other side of us, we also bounded by another company that it announced just a while ago, about $3 million work program as well. So we're surrounded by activity and drilling. We're going to build on this.
SH: You’ve also just opened a $4 million dollar private placement. This may be news to many investors. Can you speak to the impact and benefits of it?
GD: So we've had a great response, a lot of interest in our private placement and we expect to close that close that fairly soon. The money for this raise is going to be used for the second wave of drilling in the Yukon. Again, in Yukon, we have about a four month season whereas in Newfoundland you perhaps have a 10 month season where you can do active expiration and drilling. So as a company we're trying to diversify our asset base by going after right now what's available in the Yukon but also you know adding to the activity of our company given the environment or the weather that we have in Newfoundland to our favor.
SH: The company looks set for strong growth in 2021. How are you placed to expand operations moving forward?
GD: So our plan is multifaceted. So I alluded earlier in the Yukon, we have a 2.5 million inferred resource we're doing step-out drilling, trying to get a deeper resource and mineralization into an updated 43-101 in the fall. So that's going to provide us, we hope greater momentum and perhaps listing on a more senior exchange as well. The attractiveness of our Yukon properties, it's all about scale, size, scope. This is a massive property. We have a host rock that represents at least 10 cubic kilometers in size. So that's the infant resource that was drilled represents a pinprick of this whole Stock. So it's all about size and scale and so we're going to really try to expand on this initial resource with identifying additional deposits or hotspots throughout the entire mountain. The Newfoundland properties, it's a different type of gold that we're going after. These are more shallow vein systems. So it requires a different type of strategy versus again, Yukon porphyries, finally disseminate gold throughout the entire amount. So we're going to definitely use our technical team, the knowledge gained by our neighbors to really put together and source a more defined work program especially in Newfoundland over the next couple months.
SH: For shareholders and potential investors, what kind of future development and progress can we expect at those core projects you talked about?
GD: So with an additional 4 million (dollars) financing, we're going to be fully funded for work expiration in Newfoundland and by the way Dave, we have two properties. You may be happy to hear about that. We actually have two properties. One is the Quinn lake and the other one is the Grub line that's short for Gander River Ultramafic Belt, just similar to our Quinn Lake Property adjacent to Marathon Gold. Our Grub line property is also adjacent and on trend with Newfound Gold's recent discoveries, particular that Keats Discovery, which was we just discovered a couple of couple of years ago and I think just started an entire gold mania in Newfoundland, but we are adjacent to Newfound gold and on trend line. So, again we're very excited about having these sweet spots, these targets that are quite shallow base, that we can really drill pretty quickly and hopefully get positive results.
SH: Your stock has had a very sharp rise, up over a whopping 24-hundred percent in the past year. What can you tell our investor audience regarding the current valuation of your stock and why you think it's still a good value buy right now?
GD: Yeah, there's a couple of things to know here. It's very rare to say this but we are a junior exploration company with 20 million shares outstanding and that's it, 20 million shares outstanding. So whereas many of our competitors will have hundreds of million shares outstanding. So we have a very tight structure and I think that is part of the alert, the attractiveness to our long existing shareholder base. Many of our shareholders are long-term in nature. They'd been with us for years, literally for years and a good number of them are participating in every financing round in the past year or so. So this I think is validation to our plan in place to develop the company acquire assets and to monetize them with further exploration programs in the future. So that's one side of it.
The fact that we have a tight structure, I think is very attractive. The other aspect to our company is the fact that we have size, scale, and scope of our properties and again, I go back to the Yukon property, 2.5 million ounces based on 17,000 meters of drilling. So if you look at it as far as an ounce per meters drilled ratio, you'd be hard pressed to find one company out there that would actually have anything close to what we have and again, I look at companies in the Yukon that also are, have these porphyry based sort of targets, Victoria Gold drilled a million ounces, million meters plus. Golden Predator, 4 or 500,000 meter drilling, White Gold, et cetera, et cetera. If you compare all these companies and compare them to their resources with what we have with so little of the drilling, I think that speaks volume as far as where we are in our trajectory, that being we’re a baby, where we're in our infant stage, we're in the first inning of the game here. So I think the upside of these projects is really unlimited and I say that with caution, but the reality is the size and scale of our property particularly in the Yukon is unlimited because we've drilled so little and look at what we were able to acquire or at least produce based on the limited drilling.
SH: The principal founder of Newfound Gold Corp., Sean Zubick, has invested and backed your company. What does this level of support mean to you and your business?
GD: I think it provides us a validation Dave on the fact that we have a business model that is prudent, that is methodical, and I think it also provides us opportunities to work with increasing on logistics as far as hiring consultants, people who know the area so we can streamline the processes for drilling for work exploration. The fact that he's invested in the company and believes in what we're accomplishing. I think again, speaks volumes to the trajectory of our company.
SH: Can you tell our audience a little bit about your corporate management and board teams along with the experience and innovative ideas that they bring to the metals and mining exploration space?
GD: So our team is really broad bay. There's a lot of breath and depth. So our Vice President of exploration, Dr. Stuart Jackson, has a PhD. He's been responsible for numerous gold discoveries in Washington state, he was intimately involved in the Turnagain Nickel Deposit which is currently owned by Giga Metals. That deposit I believe represents the eighth or ninth largest nickel deposit, undeveloped Nickel deposit on the planet. He's leading our technical aspect, but we also have on our board, a breath of experience Nicholas. Nicholas for example, comes from the advance opportunities fund and they're incredibly successful institutional based out of Singapore, which gives us again some depth as far as fundraising and access to the Asian markets. So we built a very, very prudent team. I think the fact that everybody is on side, we have a history of finding discoveries and also able to execute and financing some of these activities. Again, speaks I think, volumes to the fact that I think our shareholders see the value here and that's probably reflected in the share price today.
SH: If you could gaze into your mining crystal ball, where do you see the precious metals market – and specifically gold – headed in the next 12 months?
GD: Dave, I think it's undeniable. Just the given the government deficits, debts, the spending binges, the potential for not potential, the likelihood of inflation gold being a hedge against all of these macro economic factors. I think it's undeniable, the math doesn't lie. So we are optimistic that gold will continue to appreciate sure there'll be a volatility, but over the longer term and I believe that we are in a supercycle, I really do believe that we are the beginning of a new supercycle in gold and if you look at history of gold, these cycles tend to last decades and I think that's where we are with the precious metal here.
SH: If there's anything that I've overlooked, please feel free to elaborate.
GD: The bottom line is we have a diversified asset base in the Yukon with these are safe havens. The mass scale scope of this project is incredible. We have two and a half million ounces on limited drilling. We will aggressively continue to drill and drill out this mountain in the Yukon, the project is called the Foreign Gold project. We're also going to dovetail these company activities into the Newfoundland projects and we're going to be active with the next year. We'll hope to have upgraded and reports based on our activities this summer and now hopefully one of these days we'll be at a higher senior exchange as well. So we definitely have a roadmap here that we want to execute on and with some how we'll get there.
For more corporate information on the company, visit:
stjamesgold.com.
FULL DISCLOSURE: This is a paid article produced by Stockhouse Publishing.