Categories: Precious Metals / Mining Stocks
Topics: Gold Stocks / Copper Stocks

Kincora Copper (TSX-V: KCC)(OTC: BZDLF) CEO Sam Spring on Strategic Financing Including Rick Rule & Jeff Phillips

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Kincora Copper (TSX-V: KCC)(OTC: BZDLF), Mr. Sam Spring. Sam, how are you today?

Sam Spring: Very well, Gerardo. Great to link up.

Gerardo Del Real: We chatted briefly off-air, and I was mentioning to you, what a time to have copper and gold assets in a tier-one jurisdiction, with copper touching a new record high gold price, looking to head much higher, partially because of the tariff announcement by the Trump administration.

You, sir, just managed to pull off attracting the attention of two of the most influential natural resource investors in the space. And I'm speaking, of course, about Mr. Rick Rule and Jeff Phillips. You announced a strategic private placement, and you also announced that you would be doing a share consolidation to clean up the structure and put you in position to take advantage of what I think we both believe is going to be a historic copper and historic gold market.

Congratulations on the deal. Can you explain the thinking behind it?

Sam Spring: Yeah, no, thank you, Gerardo. It's great to have, I guess, such names as you touched on there, coming in and backing Kincora's strategy and financially supporting that. And really, what this funding will enable us is to do more drilling. We support more asset level deals. We're seeing our management fees for being an operator with third-party funding increasing. And ultimately, what we're in this game for is more discoveries.

And backing the technical team, backing this business model, just means that we can accelerate and have a better position to drive the value that we think is inherent within the portfolio, and within the company, but we hadn't had the right balance sheet, didn't have the right shareholder registry, didn't have the right capital structure to really unlock that.

And I think, having this 12-month hold on stock, having an accelerator for the warrant, doing this rollback, is really just tightening up the capital structure so that we can see a significant rerate as we've got these multiple catalysts ahead of us, and get us to where we think a fair market cap is, based on a number of peers that are out there.

Gerardo Del Real: That 12-month hold, to me, is one of the most impressive aspects of the financing. That along, obviously, with getting the attention of the likes of a Rick Rule and Jeff Phillips, who don't easily part with their checkbooks. There were several other very influential names that I want to be respectful to, that are also participating in the financing.

But that 12-month hold, to me, shows a real commitment to the company. And that's got to feel satisfying, because you and I chatted last time about how the shareholder registry in the past had been a bit of a challenge, and kept a lid on the price. And I think, everybody coming in and saying, "We'll not only write a check, we'll tie up those shares for 12 months. We're not in this for the four-month-and-a-day play that a lot of people do," has to feel satisfying?

Sam Spring: It does. And for listeners who aren't familiar, we had a large shareholder that used positive news flow over the course of the third quarter last year, until mid-May this year, as a liquidity event to exit. So having come off that period, where that overhang impacted the valuation of the company quite significantly, to have this structure in place with the names that are backing it, is really satisfying. But the most important thing is providing the right runway for everyone to see the share price perform very well with the catalyst that we've got ahead of us.

Gerardo Del Real: No, exciting stuff. For those not familiar, because you're now going to attract brand new eyes to this story, for those not familiar, can you explain the asset base, and the region, and why that's so important?

Sam Spring: Yeah, and the focus of the company is gold-rich copper porphyries. We have one Cobar style deposit that this funding will enable us to drill, and we think that's a very attractive scenario, given it's a historical mining field, there's very good ore grade, the intervals that are there. And that deposit's within trucking distance to a mill that's seeking third-party ore. That Cobar super basin's attracting a fair bit of interest.

Harmony is just putting in a 1.6 billion offer for Mac, for the CSA mine. So I think that Cobar district will attract a fair bit of attention. And the drilling that we're looking to do at our Condobolin project, supported by this funding, is a pretty unique scenario.

But coming back to these copper porphyries that we've got, in New South Wales, you've had 16 billion of M&A. You've had over 385 million dollars worth of earn-in deals, from majors supporting exploration with juniors trying to find the next big discoveries. And there's been two big recent discoveries, two 10 million ounce gold equivalent discoveries within this region. So it's a focus of activity, and I think what we've got within this portfolio is seven major asset groups.

We've got a strategy and the ability now to fund all those assets, that the deals we've done to date, six deals supported over $110 million worth of asset level partner funding, we've seen about five and a half of that go in the ground to date, over 11,000 meters of drilling. We're expecting to see our flagship projects, our Trundle, Fair Home, Jemalong projects that we retain a hundred percent of, and these licenses sit within existing mineral camps that all support over 20 million ounce gold equivalent resource inventory, they're the partnerships that we are looking to do next.

So I guess, Gerardo, in summary, we've got third party expenditure that's taking place at a number of projects. We've got management fees ramping up where we are an operator and that's a non-dilutive form of income to us. But we've got further deal flow ahead of us for our flagship projects. And I guess, that's a really nice tailwind with the balance sheet and the corporate structure that we now have in place with this financing.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, couldn't agree with you more. Congratulations. I think it's going to be a milestone moment for the company. I'm really excited to see that shareholder value really unlocked. And I encourage everybody to go and have a look at Kinkora, because I think it's going to be a year of discovery. And then, frankly, several years of discoveries. And in this copper and gold environment, that's exciting to me. Sam, anything to add to that?

Sam Spring: No, I think with exploration, it's all about getting the numbers in your favor. And the more good quality projects that we are drilling, the more shots on goal for that re-rate. Then I think filling, addressing some of the deficiencies that the company's had, has been achieved from this financing. And we've really got the right structure, corporately and exploration-wise, to really hit this hard, and see those results come through to a much better share price and market cap.

Gerardo Del Real: Always a pleasure, Sam. Appreciate the time.

Sam Spring: Thank you, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, chat soon.

 

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