Conventional wisdom in the junior mining world is, if your stock price isn’t ramping up, and the market isn’t giving love to anyone, the one thing to do in a hurry is wait.
- Don’t raise when the price is down;
- Don’t yell at clouds about market forces;
- Don’t answer emails or calls. Don’t work.
Just.. wait.
Pay yourself of course, because you’re not a charity. And maybe put out a news release about some conference you’re going to once a month, but don’t waste time and energy fighting the tide by actually advancing your project, just sit in your nicely appointed office and charge your lunch at Cactus Club.
That’s the conventional wisdom. That’s what Ashley Gold (ASHL.C) Darcy Christian is being told to do by the usual people who tell people what to do.
The proposed gameplan:
He called me last week and, to be honest, he looked pissed. Turns out, he’s not into taking a paycheque without sweating in return and asked for my opinion on the whole ‘shh’ thing.
“Like.. should I just do what everyone else does?” he asked.
My answer was quick and maybe a bit loud. No.
No, don’t do what everyone else is doing. Do the work, even in a vacuum. Do the work, even if nobody notices.
The Equity.Guru ‘mining when the market is crap’ plan:
- Find a drill;
- Find some walking around money;
- Make a hole.
If you can’t figure a way to do that, move down to the B list.
- Fly a helicopter over the property and take pictures;
- Walk the property with a geo and take readings;
- Get chased by a bear;
- Turn a fucking shovel over, see if something catches your eye.
If you can’t figure a way to do that, move down to the C list.
- Call everyone in the area who may be in the same position, and see if someone wants (or needs) to pool resources.
If you can’t make that happen, move down to the D list.
- Sell everything and never look back.
But never do nothing.
Because, one day, when the markets catch their breath and start working again, the guy that’s been busy through the downtime has proven he’s real and will get so much respect, while the guys that stayed in cotton wool and flipped investor hundos to the pretty servers look on longingly.
Darcy agreed. You can see it when you talk to him, he’s generally pissed off to be doing the heavy lifting on this thing solo because it limits his output and he wants to be busy. He’s a geo by trade, so not averse at all to traveling to the project and turning a shovel, or angling the drill, or driving to town to get coffee so the guys on the ground can keep at it through the rain.
A lot of junior mining CEOs, if they ever actually cast a shadow over a mining property, look like Ron DeSantis after a hurricane when they do so.
Darcy, on the other hand, was a technical advisor to large resource companies for 15 years before he decided to smother his career with the pillow of running a junior mining explorer at this moment in our history.
I kid, kinda, but when you talk to this cat, there’s no shortage of good information given about what he wants to do on the property, how he could do it to get the best results, and how he plans to make it happen without taking a decade to do it and using investor banknotes for campfire kindling.
Like, for reals now, this is his office.
I’m reliably informed that’s a rock behind him, not an errant rat, but it appears Darcy’s office consists of a rock, a plant, a table, and a chair.
- Total cost for the setup at Ikea; $49;
- Total cost per month: Keeping the missus happy enough that she doesn’t turn it into a sewing room.
“We raised a bit of money and put it in the ground, we drilled into some historic holes and found the assays matched closely with the original data,” he told me. “That’s the good side – we got a metre of 41.5 grams of gold per tonne. We know there’s high grade gold in the area.”
The downside?
“We found gold at the bottom end of our drilling, which means we didn’t go deep enough. That’s a good problem to have, if you’re going to have one, but who knows how deep it might go?”
The highlights:
- TL-23-001 intersects 41 grams per tonne gold over one metre, including visible gold from 60.5 metres;
- Deeper mineralization confirmed in addition to main workings;
- Metallic screening of TL-23-001 shows coarse fraction of 535 g/t Au;
- Mineralization in quartz flooding into wallrock shows elevated gold values;
- Maiden program successfully confirms high-grade nature of Tabor.
Cool. Not bad. Good early stage numbers for a little program.
“This is a great result for Ashley and its shareholders,” he said in a news release. “We have confirmed high-grade mineralization of the area as well as deeper mineralized potential identified by historical drilling. We see mineralization into the wallrock at the vein interfaces, which will become important for stoping widths in a production scenario. Grade variability is to be expected in these high-grade systems; the fact we have hit mineralization in all holes is a significant finding, especially when considering we have only drilled 550 metres to date.
So why is Darcy pissed?
Because he’s used to dealing with large companies that can just move a half dozen drills to the area, load up the crews, and damn the torpedoes on the basis of results like this.
At Ashley Gold, he’s got to fight for every scrap and ride a little luck along the way.
“There’s a drill nearby we can maybe grab for the winter season and build on these results, I’m calling other companies in the area and having conversations about what they need and what we need and seeing if there’s partnership options, there are really cheap projects around that we could conceivably grab and expand with, but right now I really just want to find a handful of smart money guys who see what we have here and understand how much we can do with a really small amount of money.”
Darcy knows he can raise money, that’s not at issue, though he’d rather not do it at this price. He’s also mindful of rumours that a lot of companies have raised flow-through dollars this past year and used the funds to keep the lights on, rather than to flow-through to the ground, reasoning that the markets will swing upwards soon enough and they can quietly replace what’s owed.. that’s had an impact on how much flow-through dough is still available, and points to a potential sector catastrophe in the making if other companies are upside down for too long.
But if you thought Ashley Gold was down to plan D on the Equity.Guru ‘get er done’ list, think again.
Ashley Gold Corp. has entered into an option agreement to earn 100 per cent of contiguous claims directly east of the Tabor property including the past-producing Sakoose mine subject to a 1.5-per-cent net smelter royalty (NSR).
Wait, what now? You heard it right, Darcy Christian is so NOT doing nothing, he’s gone out and found more land to work, with a project 5km away, where historic production was done back in the early 1900’s, ending when the local mill burned down. There’s been no prospecting done between the two properties, though it appears likely they’re connected
- Option includes a five-kilometre fold hinge trend between the Tabor and Sakoose mine;
- Historical production at Sakoose between 1897 and 1902 reported as 8,828 tons at 11.9 grams per tonne.
So what sort of couch cushion cash did Darcy have to come up with to open things up in this way?
- $8,000 cash payment and 200,000 shares on execution of agreement;
- Y1 — $12,000 cash payment;
- Y2 — $18,000 cash payment;
- Y3 — $30,000 cash payment or, at election of Ashley, $14,000 cash payment and $20,000 payable in shares based on previous 20-day volume weighted average price (VWAP);
- 1.5% net smelter royalty (NSR) with option to purchase 0.5 per cent back at $600,000.
Cheap as balls.
Meanwhile, Darcy wants to drill. He’s gagging for it. One drill, two, rechargeable DeWalt home power drill from Canadian Tire – whatever he can get his hands on.
You need your car washed before you hand your investment over? He’s got a chamois and a bucket.
Blackberry need clearing in the backyard? Make an offer.
Darcy wants to do the work. Send drills. No Cactus Club tab necessary.
— Chris Parry
FULL DISCLOSURE: Ashley Gold is an Equity.Guru marketing client, and we own stock in the company.