Member Info for CaveatEmptor

Hello Lex,
I agree entirely - however, I think has been posted before on this BB, It is unlikely that AA will only want 80% of the asset - would you if you were in their shoes? - So a 100% sale is a more likely scenario IMHO. Likewise, waiting for us to prove up over 2MT of Cu equivalent would be an expensive way for them to get their hands on Bushranger, much better from their perspective to make an offer once they feel that the porphyry is commercially viable so they can maximise profit on the potential upside. - Which would be great for us as it means we could become cash-rich ( maybe even pay a special dividend?) and concentrate on our other assets without the ongoing distraction and cash drain of owning 20% of Bushranger.

Hello Joe,

I think I remember an early report on hole 1 where the Geos said that they thought they may have skimmed the core of the porphyry rather than drilling down the centre as originally intended? If this is the case then transverse drills through the porphyry could well help to plot the true position of the core and give areas of improved grades of mineralisation?

So it may be that the grades given for drill 1 are for one of the onion rings rather than the avocado stone...That would certainly be exciting.

If the core really was missed on drill 1 then I would think that one of the phase 2 follow-up drills would be a repeat of drill 1 , but better positioned to measure the actual core.

WTO - I guess that depends on your outlook.

Gold prices are volatile based on many factors including world politics - is therefore unpredictable so could be up one year and down the next.

Copper on the other hand, is just at the start of what is likely to be a 20 year+ bull run, sustained by global electrification and eco revolution.

If I were a major miner that wants good sustainable profits for the foreseeable future I think I know where I would want to invest.

Another good interview from CB - some majors already showing an interest - "just what the doctor ordered"

hello Ella,

I seem to remember CB stating that we had increased the strike by over 300m following drill1 - so it must have already been around 600m from the original JORC?

I averaged out the 250 m from the Long Section diagram (using horizontal sections through the mineralisation shown in the diagram) - but I guess it could be a bit less if you ignore the marginal very low grades or measure at an oblique angle through the down plunge.

General principal remains the same and results are far better than most think IMO.

Thinking about it, today's RNS could have been misinterpreted by the market after all.

The original JORC of 71MT was based on an exploration area of mineralisation that demonstrated a strike length of about 900m, depth of 600m and average width of about 250m - so about 135M x 2.7 specific gravity = 365M tonnes of rock in total.

So out of 365MT of rock, only 71MT contained commercially viable Cu content - or about 20%.

We have just had an RNS that says that we have commercially viable content of Cu over more than 80% of the strike length.

Happy to be told where I have gone wrong, but this would seem to indicate that out 0.3% Copper over 900m would be equivalent to about 1.2% copper if corrected to directly compare with the original JORC.

Hopefully CB will touch on this if he has an interview with Zac today...

Of course the next drill results are likely to reduce the overall commercial Cu content percentage - but over 80% is a great place to be starting from.

hello DA,

My comment was in response to Gordie's question regarding drill 6 rather than assay results?

No news is good news on that front, as far as I am concerned.

I have always said that I would like the assay results as soon as possible - it is just the practicality of having them by early this week that I was questioning... And I was proved to be right.

Hello Gordie,

Most of us are hoping not to hear anything before the end of next week or possibly, with luck, some time the week after. So. yes!

I would not be surprised if the next RNS is a TR1...

Hello Steve,

Looking at drill 2, it finished on February 5th and on Feb 12th drill3 had gone just over 300m - so a little over 4 days of drilling - looks like another 2 or 3 days downtime to swap positions?

Hello Ella,

From memory, XTR has to give MMP part of its GF income in return for permission to farm it out to the Chinese mining company ( because it was part of the original hard rock deal with MMP).

MMP will have to pay the royalty out of their share - it has, as you say, nothing to do with XTR. However it does mean that all involved parties should get at least some income from Manica before Q4.

All from memory, as I said, so am happy to be corrected if I am wrong.

hello Steve,

I am not sure that is true - drill 3 finished on Feb 23th with drill 4 having just over 1 day's drilling time before being suspended, then Drill 5 had had about 1.5 days drilling time when reported on March 1st - so 3 or 4 days down-time in total between drills...?

Regarding income from Manica, we know that the Chinese have been mining GF since late December/Early January but we have not had any news of first gold sales yet. The only reason for this, that I can see, is that the ore has to be stockpiled prior to commencement of processing so that there will be a guaranteed continuous feed to the system and this has caused a lag between mining and gold production.

I see no reason why the same will not be true for Fairbride - so even if mining does start by the end of Q2 or even early in Q3 then we would not reasonably expect any income before early Q4.

As far as I can see there are, as yet, no contradictions in recent forward guidance on Fair Bride, either by XTR or by Empress.

One thing i di d notice though was that Empress mentioned Manica agreement also covered three satellite deposits to Fair Bride - I assume these are BE, DL and GF?

As GF is just about to produce gold sales, and assuming it is part of the overall Manica deal, I would think it very unlikely Empress will need to wait until Q4 for first revenue from manica.

Hello Ice,

I guess your estimate of drill depth is predicated on a start date of some time last week?

In a perfect world where machinery works without maintenance and people are happy to work 12/7 indefinitely without a break that might be a practical assumption but in the real world things are not so predictable.

I would be very surprised if drill 6 started before some time on Sunday so my estimate would be 150m - 200m at the moment. AIMO, of course.

From memory, the oxide will be mined first and is expected to last about 3 years then mining will continue into the transition zone and continue for another 2-3 years so LOM should be about 6 years.

Hello Gixxer, yes same pad but totally different alignment - and I did say "serious mineralisation" - I very much doubt that the mineralisation in hole 5 was of decent grade and continuous from 45m...

Best guess is that drill 6 will be at about 100m by now and unlikely to hit any serious mineralisation before about 400m - as we are testing down-plunge depth this time I think the overall drill length will be at least 900m so it should finish between the end of next week and the early part of the week after, maybe even as late as March 31st if we are really lucky - so whether we like it or not we will all need to have at least a little patience when it comes to drill 6...

Always a conflict of interests for juniors when they want to sell an asset to a major:

-Junior wants to prove up as much as possible before going to market so as to get the best price
-Major wants as much information as possible, as soon as possible, so as to get in with an offer once the asset becomes profitable and before the price goes up too much so they can make extra profits on the upside.

- The answer is usually for the Junior to get busy and drill as much and as quickly as possible so as to build up the data and prove up as much as possible in a short period of time before attracting serious interest from the Majors. That way they can maximise value before being distracted by buy-out negotiations ( PIs can be their own worst enemy, and a bane to the BOD, at his point as they often find it hard to say 'No' when there is a hard cash offer on the table...).
XTR is at the 'drill it quick' phase and hopefully we will get to 2-3Mt before the majors catch up with us.

Just another 2-3 drills needed after the current one and then we could well be there...

1day,
You don't have to be mad to post here - but it does help!

hello Ella,

I think that the general consensus was that due to the longer than anticipated drill times (for very positive reasons), the most likely time for the model is now late March/early April - so hopefully not long to wait...