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

Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTC: LMSQF) CEO Keith Henderson on Drilling at Organullo Gold Project, Salta Province, Argentina

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of the very busy Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTC: LMSQF), Mr. Keith Henderson. Keith, how are you this afternoon, sir?

Keith Henderson: Hello. Very well. Always a pleasure.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, I think the best way to start this conversation is by how we started the conversation off the air, which was you saying to me what a lovely time to be in the resource space, and I couldn't describe it any better. We have gold at or near record highs. We have silver screaming to make new record highs. And then seemingly on a quick march there, copper starting to break back out. I could go on. But the bottom line is we have ourselves a market.

Latin Metals is hitting the ground running with drilling at the Organullo Gold Project in Argentina. AngloGold Ashanti coming in, vetting the project and ready to drill 10 holes, 6,000 meters. Can you tell me a bit about the partnership with AngloGold Ashanti and of course the project which I couldn't be more excited to see a drill turning on?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, absolutely. Let's start with AngloGold Ashanti, truly a fantastic partner. We were really, really happy to bring them in as a partner three years ago, and they've done really good work. They've been really, really patient and they've worked very hard in helping us to put the drill permit together. They just haven't wavered. They've been telling me for some time that this is their number one grassroots project in the world. So of all the things that they're looking at exploring and drilling, this is the one that they're most excited about. And so that explains why they've been just this patient.

The project's a fantastic project. It's been a while since we've talked about it, so let's just run over some of the highlights. We've owned the project for a while. We've had other partners come in here, including Yamana a few years ago. The funny thing about this project though, it's really a geological story because geologists sometimes can be predictable. And on this project, when you drive onto the project, you see a little tiny mine at the bottom of a hillside where in the 1930s some very entrepreneurial fellows went into the middle of nowhere and pulled out a whole bunch of gold and produced gold in business for some time, and that's great. That's 1930s small-scale early exploration on the property. It really doesn't matter.

And all the geologists that go on site, they go and look at this mine and they get very excited because they're geologists and they can't help it. And then they look on top of the hill, which is sitting on top of this mine.

They go, my God, we're going to go and we're going to drill through this hill and we're going to find all kinds of gold. And they didn't. Everyone basically went there and did the same thing. They found some gold, of course, quite a lot actually, but it's kind of low grade and it's not really the first prize here. So AngloGold had a different view of the world. They came on the property, they walked over what other people had looked at, but then they went a little bit further. They walked several kilometers to the west. They covered the entire property and critically for them what they saw were rocks that they felt were similar to rocks that they'd seen in Colombia when they made a whole series of large gold discoveries in Colombia in the early 2000s. And so bringing that experience to Organullo, they said, my God, these rocks look exactly the same.

This is the same kind of system. And just for comparison, if we're looking at modern day analogies, the technical analogies that AngloGold would use would be Salares Norte in Chile, which is a gold project. It's just a little under 4 million ounces and it's just a little bit over five grams per tonne gold. So very high grade, very large scale deposit. And we can't offer any guarantees that we're going to find one at Organullo, but that's what these guys think this has potential for. And that's a significant thing in itself. When they go into their management teams in AngloGold Ashanti and they look for big money to come and explore these kinds of projects. They have to be able to persuade their management teams that there is in fact potential for 5 million ounces and at the right kind of grade in a deposit that's going to be interesting to the company.

And so this is the greatest thing for investors in Latin Metals. They can look at what AngloGold Ashanti have done, the extremely detailed amount of due diligence that they've done, the conclusions that they've drawn about what might be there and what they believe to be the quality of their exploration project. And so if you're an investor looking at this, you don't have to give it a lot more thought. These guys have been successful in the past, and we really hope that they'll be just as successful when they start drilling at Organullo, which is going to be very soon.

Gerardo Del Real: They have the potential, the option to earn up to 80% in the project. I mentioned that the first drill program is going to be roughly 6,000 meters, 10 drill holes. Having 20% of an AngloGold Ashanti vetted project if you hit, I think is going to catch the attention of the market. We're seeing discoveries finally, finally getting rewarded, right? Prospector Metals just put out a phenomenal hole. They're up 306% today. And so I think we're finally at the stage of the cycle where quality exploration leads to quality results leads to a significant re-rating. It hasn't been the case for quite some time. You happen to have multiple irons in the fire as it relates to partnerships, potential partnerships and drill programs that will be executed between now and the end of the year and going into 2026. Can you speak to that a bit before I let you go?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, I really agree with you. I think that discoveries are being recognized. I think we're seeing proper valuations put onto things, and I look at Latin Metals today, and I just call this pre-discovery pricing and pre-discovery pricing will not last forever. We're going to have rigs turning real soon here, and within a couple of months we're going to have results coming out, and if those results are good, Latin Metals is not going to continue to look like this kind of value. So yeah, it's really exciting times for us. Other projects that are drilling, so 6,000 Meters at AngloGold's project, we are getting pretty close to inking a deal with another company who are going to come in and partner with us on a project, a silver project in Santa Cruz called Cerro Bayo Silver Gold Project. We're super excited about that.

That's high grade veins, bonanza grade. This is a project, if you remember that Barrick was partnered with us on for some time. We've covered this story before. We think it's a very high quality project. Barrick did too, although it didn't fit with their overall strategy in the end. But if we can now bring someone else in and similarly have a drill-based project that will be fantastic news for us. The project is ready to drill. It is drill permitted. We finished that earlier this year, so this year has been a tremendous year of building for us. We have the permit at Cerro Bayo. We had the permit come in for AngloGold. If we can sign up another partner. We also have Esperanza. 

We don't think that's going to be drilling this year. In fact, we pretty much know that. But we do expect it to be drilling in the early part of next year, and that's completely different to something like AngloGold in that it's not grassroots exploration. We've already had a very significant discovery there as longer term shareholders will remember back a few years ago, we intersected almost 400 meters from surface 0.5, 7% copper 0.27 grams gold at the time, ignoring the gold credit at the time when that was drilled, it was the third-best copper intersection in the world during that three month period during that quarter. So really significant. That's just a step out project. And as you step out from an intersection like that, you're not really thinking about whether you're going to find something, you're thinking about what you're going to find, how much you're going to find and what grade is going to be.

And so that's going to be super, super interesting and one that we're really, really waiting for. And then just continue with the search for partners. We've seen such a change in the last six months in terms of the number of companies speaking to us, the companies that are not just talking to us, not just reviewing data, but booking trips and coming to look at our projects. We've been running almost a constant process of site visits at various projects. And that kind of work eventually leads to partnerships being established, and we're really excited about that too.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, Keith, you've done it well. You've put shareholders in position for the type of re-rating that gets everybody in the space excited. You have some quality, quality projects, partners in top-notch jurisdictions. It should be a fun end to 2025, and I can't wait for 2026. Anything to add to that?

Keith Henderson: No, I have nothing in particular to add. It's just been a fantastic few weeks. I'm also, actually, I'm on the board of a company that went public just a few days ago, which is a Bolivian silver exploration project. And this again, just speaks to the type of market we're in because that was an RTO with a 15 cent financing, and that company opened up trading at 35 cents, and it's sitting at 43 right now, and it's trading hundreds and hundreds of thousands of shares. So talk about timing, and I said to the CEO, you've just been the luckiest guy in the world because he's been working hard on this for several years, and facing delays in getting things through the exchange and getting things actually to be trading and look, when it actually happens, I'm going, yeah, this is exciting times, perfect timing, and I hope also perfect timing for that metal as well.

Gerardo Del Real: Nothing happens and then all of a sudden 10 years later, you're an overnight success. Right? Funny how that works in the business.

Keith Henderson: Exactly. Yeah.

Gerardo Del Real: No, good stuff. Keith, excited to have you on. Excited to have you back. And really excited to get those drills turning. Thank you so much.

Keith Henderson: Super. Thanks so much. Talk soon.

Gerardo Del Real: Chat soon. Cheers now.