RE: Straight bet for traders next week8 Jul 2018 15:40
Afternoon.
Yup, again, I'd invite you all to think about how further exploration may be funded here and/or JVs sold onto someone better placed to take it to the next level.
Rio already have exploration JVs on the go, they're not just about outright buyouts.
We've seen Rio talk about the dearth of suitable T/O targets and the possibility that they combine more modest deals/resources to make it worth their while. They've been looking for a year and still haven't done a deal yet - enough said imo.
(Intriguingly, that's around when Rick Rule took his £4.5m of MTR shares at 3p - just saying .......)
In that context, a proven resource(s) buyout combined with a further exploration JV buyout/swapsees/funding may fit the bill nicely.
It's probably a full year now since I first talked about the prospect of a major making a *strategic* move into this area (prompted by Rick Rule's big buy at 3p in April 2017!) and I just cannot emphasise enough why a move being strategic to a company/group can shift the boundaries with respect to deals being done.
If you're making a strategic move (for the broader/longer-term benefit of the company/group) then you may well be comfortable taking on more risk than you would normally do, take on different sized deals than you would normally do, take on more complex deals than you would normally do and, even, view some opportunites in a "loss-leading" light because the prevailing environment in the space suggests it's worth the punt.
I've referred to this before but I'll do so again as it's important imo:
A couple or three years ago when Cupric Canyon's resource wasn't a whole lot different to ours in terms of targets and the ground they'd covered, Barclays (out of London BTW - Cupric are American ...) threw a hefty six-figure sum at them for further exploration/proving up of that land. Fast-forward to the current position and they're sitting on c500mt of Copper resource at a 1-2% grade and there ain't many of those about in the world anymore.
Involved in that project was MOD's very own JJvR who is now leading MOD's exploration campaign.
Put the case that JJvR is able to demonstrate that he's capable, via the AEM tech, of accurately locating Copper across this land with any degree of consistency at all and I would suggest that you may well see history repeat itself in terms of serious further exploration money being poured in from any number of interested parties - not just majors - but it isn't going to be at anywhere near the current SP level.
MOD know this of course and I don't doubt for a second that they're throwing the kitchen sink at these current drills to demonstrate the above because they know what almost certainly happens next.
Ultimately, yes, size and grades count but imo don't underestimate how the perspective of interested parties may shift dramatically here on early promising drill/assay results in the current period ...
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