How to play the junior market when juniors of all stripes are suffering so much?

Dyed in the wool junior speculators look to sweet exploration

Juniors: a couple newsletter writers weigh in on the type of junior their now out hunting - and buying.

Author: Kip Keen
Posted: Friday , 28 Jun 2013

HALIFAX, NS (MINEWEB) -

Indeed the currents against juniors strenghthened in recent months with the heavy fall off in gold and copper prices. Meantime the global economy sputters along. This engine sounds like an old two stroke (in case you didn't grow up in or near a fishing village, here's what an old Acadia two stroke sounds like, via YouTube video). And this comparison is being kind to the economy, which doesn't run so steadily or fix so readily.

The recent pain builds on older and still open wounds for juniors. Fields of green - financings - started to go brown back in 2011, perhaps after few years of overgrazing. The result is a vast numbers of junior shareprices at all time lows and many exploration teams that find themselves in precarious position without funds to explore. In mining and exploration, layoffs are in full swing. A geologist friend who works for an explorer reminded me what his father, also a geologist, called a good geo: one with a backup plan.

For speculators, the position is equally precarious. In that regard I was curious what diehard junior speculators are doing with their junior portfolios given such a poisonous marketplace. In recent interviews I got to Mickey Fulp, the Mercenary Geologist, and John Kaiser, of Kaiser Research, for their feedback.

It wasn't a question of whether they were looking at juniors for opportunities. You don't ask a wolf if it still likes to hunt when the flock is weak. No. You expect it to pick the most tender meat. The question was what did they find tender these days.

Both have juniors doing fairly early-stage exploration in their sights.

“You know I am screening for companies that dare to drill in this market,” Kaiser told me recently. “Because they're not getting rewarded for so called encouragement, exploration that increases the probability that you will make a big discovery.”

His logic is that now junior explorers that can afford to drill can only afford to drill their very best targets, ones they are highly optimistic about. “Because the bullet factory is shut,” Kaiser said. “When you've spent your bullets you can hang up your hat and turn out the lights in this market. So looking at companies that are drilling - that's actually a good filter because with 80 percent of the juniors below 20 cents - like everything's a bottomfish threatening to become a dead fish.”

But Kaiser is sobering about the chance of exploration failure, an outcome speculators must be willing to accept especially during a bearish market. “It's a very high risk high reward situation where you have to go in there and expect to lose everything: i.e. the stock goes down 90, 95 percent from like 10 cents.”

But still he gave a nod to the opportunity created by the broad selloff in junior equities: “The leverage on the upside is substantial.”

We've seen it recently. The best known example of late is Colorado Resources, which made a porphyry copper find in BC that sent its shares screaming up by about ten fold at one point. While it has since come down quite a bit since, its shareprice has remained elevated enough to allow Colorado management to do a strong financing. Hope in that too, no? A financing after a successful exploration program, which is how it should work.

Fulp had a similar outlook on the opportunity in early stage exploration. Indeed, he is making good on it (but no name flogging here.) He's taking profits from some advanced explorers and developers that were trading sideways this year, he said, and putting them back in other earlier stage junior names.

“I have some open orders to sell that occasionally get filled,” Fulp said. “And then what I'm doing is basically moving that cash into some new extremely undervalued stories.” Not that he is betting on good things to come for the junior market on the whole anytime soon. “This is just carnage and I don't see the end of it,” he said.

He, like Kaiser, is intent (though not exclusively) on early-ish stage explorers with active drill programs and cash. Fulp stresses high quality previously undrilled targets; Colorado Resources-type stuff that could yield an exciting discovery in a jurisdiction friendly to mining. With this in mind, you might look at drill programs meant to corroborate a nice surface sampling program (oxide gold anyone?)

He minds his selling strategy too, especially now during a down market. “So rest assured that when it (a stock) doubles from its present level or just above I'll be a seller into that market.” He adds a moment later, a warning to other wolves that may be out hunting: “And in a bear market like this I think it's even more imperative to follow those sorts of programmed sells and not get greedy.”

.Integra is being fectured in The Northern Miner (June 24 - 30 / 2013)

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Integra Gold expands drill program at Lamaque

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integra Gold (ICG-V) is delay- ing the release of an updated re- source estimate that was sched- uled for later this month, not because it has fallen on hard times like so many other juniors these days, but because new results from its 2013 drill program at the Triangle zone of its Lamaque project in Quebec are so signifi- cant that they need to be incorpo- rated into the resource. Integra will also be expanding its 2013 drill program from 17,000 metres to over 20,000 metres.

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Integra released the first results from drilling in the advanced-ex- ploration Triangle zone in early April, with near-surface highlights of 5.2 grams per tonne gold over 13 metres, 14.17 grams over 2 metres and 12.20 grams over 4 metres. Fur- ther assays released in late April and the first week of June included 7.1 grams over 19.5 metres starting from 246.5 metres downhole, and 81.62 grams gold over 2 metres from 621 metres downhole.

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The company says the latest results are significant for two reasons: First, the presence of high-grade mineralization to a vertical depth of more than 600 metres doubles the previously known depth extension of both the intrusive host rock and the gold-bearing veins at the Tri- angle zone. To put that in con- text, the past-producing Lam- aque and Sigma mines, which have similar geology and lie a few hundred metres to the north of the Lamaque property, were mined from surface to depths of 1,000 and 2,000 metres. Sec- ondly, the width of a number of these high-grade intersections, the longest being over 19 metres, have never before been seen in the Triangle zone.

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The Lamaque property — previ- ously a joint venture that was 50%- owned by Teck Resources (TCK- T, TCK-N) — does not include either mine, but shares its north- eastern border with the Sigma mine. (Sigma is on care and main- tenance and owned by Deutsche Bank, which is looking for a buyer.) Between 1923 and 1985, the Lam- aque mine, operated by Teck, pro- duced 4.6 million oz. gold from more than nine mineralized zones, while Sigma produced 4.5 million oz. between 1935 and 2012.

Integra, formerly known as Kalahari Resources, bought Teck’s portion of the property in 2003, and the remaining 50% from Golden Pond and Tundra in 2009. A year later Kalahari tran- sitioned to a new management team and changed its name to Integra Gold.

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The Lamaque project is split into the South Cluster and the North Cluster, which are sepa- rated by less than 1 km. The South Cluster, which contains the Tri- angle zone and the No. 4 Plug, is located 4 km from the city of Val- d’Or and is the company’s top priority. The South Cluster ac- counts for 75% of Lamaque’s global resource.

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Indicated resources in the South Cluster stand at 140,840 tonnes grading 13.51 grams gold per tonne for 61,168 contained oz. gold. In- ferred resources add 1.3 million tonnes grading 11.06 grams gold for 444,962 contained oz. gold.

The North Cluster contains the No. 5 plug, which is about 1,000 metres north of the South Cluster’s No. 4 Plug. It also contains the Par- allel and Forestel zones. The North Cluster has indicated resources of 659,959 tonnes grading 4.8 grams gold per tonne for 101,794 con- tained oz. gold, with inferred re- sources of 1.1 million tonnes grad- ing 2.03 grams gold for 69,981 contained oz. gold.

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.Integra is confident that its up- coming resource estimate will warrant further advanced-stage studies and has already launched an environmental baseline study, metallurgical studies and a Gap analysis. The latter will focus on identifying potential applicable legal and permitting requirements, as well as linking those to required technical studies.

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In February it kicked off the first phase of metallurgical studies on mineralized samples from the South and North Clusters, and re- sults released in May exceeded expectations. Test work reported initial gold recovery of up to 92% for samples from the South Cluster and of up to 98% from the North Cluster.

President and chief executive Stephen de Jong noted at the time that the high gold recoveries of more than 90% were “consistent with what was achieved for over 60 years on similar types of min- eralization at the Lamaque and Sigmamines,”andalsoshowedthe lack of deleterious and hazardous elements in the tailings produced. Phase one involved optimized flow sheets involving gravity sep- aration, followed by direct cyani- dation.

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The phase two studies that are underway will focus on optimiz- ing gold recovery using grinding, cyanide concentration, leach time and adding flotation to the flow sheet. The second-phase studies should be completed by September.

De Jong says the project ticks a number of boxes. “If you look at our project, we’re high grade and near infrastructure, with all the benefits of being close to a mining community without in- terfering — the town acquifer and well is on the other side of town, and there is little to no de- velopment where we are — and you have past-producing mines next door,” he says in a tele- phone interview from his office in Vancouver. “These mines have similar geology and pro- duced through periods of high and low gold prices, and while it’s too early to talk about eco- nomics, historically they were low-cost producers, so US$1,400 per oz. gold is not the end of the world for us.”

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He continues that “the old say- ing at Val-d’Or is you drill for structure and drift for grade, which speaks to the importance of exploring from underground as quick as you can . . . we’re not try- ingtofindaminewitha20-to 30-year mine life. It will always be difficult to do that from surface with these types of deposits. The objective is to reach that critical mass, which might be a five-, six- or seven-year mine life, and get it to the point where you can justify the project economics. And we think that can be a lot sooner because of the existing mill infrastructure and so forth, which will impact the capital expenditures that are needed. The Lamaque and Sigma mines are the perfect example, where you have over 60 years of proven production from deposits that seldom had more than five years’ mine life.”

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In addition to exploration drill-ing at the Triangle zone, the com- pany says it is encouraged by both the grade and frequency of veins at the North Cluster’s No. 5 Plug. Exploration at the No. 5 Plug was still in its infancy when Teck first

joint-ventured the project in the late 1980s. Integra’s current explo- ration at the No. 5 Plug is the first significant, co-ordinated program there since 1988.

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In January, highlights from drill-ing the No. 5 Plug included inter- cepts of 43.6 grams gold over 2.9 metres, 38.74 grams over 1.8 metres and 21.12 grams over 1 metre. The mineralization was identified from surface to a vertical depth of 650 metres, and the drilling demon- strated that the mineralization oc- curs through the intrusive plug, which remains open at depth.

Integra notes that the No. 5 Plug is unique in the sense that it has had little surface exploration in the past, but there are three under- ground drifts at varying levels down to a vertical depth of 1,000 metres, all of which encountered gold mineralization. Moreover, the underground workings con- nect the No. 5 Plug with the Sigma and Lamaque mines.

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In terms of geological setting, Lamaque is in the Malartic Com- posite Block in the southeastern part of the Abitibi greenstone belt. About 50 km southeast is the Gren- ville front, and 1 km south of the southern edge of the Lamaque property is the Cadillac-Larder Lake fault zone. The Bourlamaque batholith lies 1.6 km northeast of the property.

Integra has $3.5 million in cash, including Quebec mining credits, which work out to $1 million and are due any day now, de Jong notes.

Over the last year Integra has traded in a range of 12.5¢ to 39¢, and at press time was trading at 17¢ apiece.

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