Categories: Base Metals
Topics: General Base Metals

Almadex Minerals (TSX-V: DEX)(OTC: AAMMF) CEO Morgan Poliquin on Exploring for Copper Porphyry Systems in Western US

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president and CEO of one of the more compelling resource speculations in the entire space – Almadex Minerals, Dr. Morgan Poliquin. Morgan, it's great to have you back on. How are you today?

Morgan Poliquin: I'm doing great, thank you. Thanks for having me on.

Gerardo Del Real: Listen, I think it's timely. You had some company-specific news I want to touch on, but more importantly, or as important, I should say, we finally have what appears to be the resource bull market that we've been anticipating. We have gold at new all-time highs. We have copper, which looks like it's headed much, much higher. Deficits are materializing in the copper space, and you just announced a new potential porphyry center at one of your projects. So I wanted to chat Arizona, I wanted to talk copper, and then I would love for you at the end of this interview to just provide an overview of the compelling speculation and why I think it's so compelling because with the drills, with the cash position, with the tiny market cap you have, and with the market that we have, there's no way that the stock should be trading at the levels right now.

Morgan Poliquin: I appreciate that. Yeah. To speak to the news that just came out, we're putting together a portfolio of projects in the Western United States, and this is one of them that we're rapidly advancing up to the drill-ready list. It is an area we identified for the first time last year and stake, and it's a broad, what we call an alteration zone where the rocks of being, colloquially, we wouldn't say cooked up by the hot fluids that we think are emanating off a porphyry system at depth. Of course, in Arizona, the copper deposits that are so well-known are porphyry copper systems.

So we think we have the indications of a fairly large porphyry environment, and we have done the detailed mapping and geologic work to help us vector in and confirm that conclusion because some minerals only form in these kinds of environments, and the fluids that are associated with those minerals leave little traces behind and indications and even little bits of bubble behind, believe it or not, in the quartz veins that help you type what you're after. So it should be obvious that there's not a lot of billion-tonne 1% copper deposits sticking out of the ground anymore. So what you have to do is use these kinds of techniques to vector yourself in. That's what we've done here. So all the techniques line up, and it needs drilling now, but we've got a really nice target that's evolved out of it. So we're pretty excited that our generative work in a mature area has turned up what appears to be a very exciting porphyry copper target.

Gerardo Del Real: This is the New Hope project, and you mentioned, of course it's in Arizona. Jurisdiction, I think, is going to continue to be critical moving forward, even in a copper bull market, which I absolutely see developing and accelerating. Now, I want to talk about the value proposition here. The company's got a market cap, roughly 13.5 million Canadian. You own, I believe, it's six drills. It might be up to seven now. You have royalties on multiple, multiple properties on very high-quality silver, gold deposits. You have a portfolio of very exciting exploration projects, and yet again, you're trading at, last time I checked as of the last reporting period, near or below cash. Can you speak to that a bit, Morgan?

Morgan Poliquin: I guess what I would say is, obviously we would like to have, and our shareholders would love to see a much higher valuation, but we've been in the generation stage. Obviously, we've been working in Mexico, or it may not be obvious to people. We've been working in Mexico for many years, and we've made a shift as that jurisdiction has become a bit more challenging to work in, shall we say? We're focused on the Western United States. It's an area that we have long worked in, and we had many ideas for generating new projects, but that's what we've been focused on the last two years.

So we've been building an exploration portfolio. We expect to be talking a lot more about what we've acquired recently and how we're developing them. But that's a real shift in focus. Of course, generating new projects is great because people understand the potential, I would hope, who are looking at our company. But on the other hand, they're early stage, necessarily. So it takes a while to fill up the pipeline and to generate results. So I think we've done that hard work, and hopefully your prognostication is correct that we've done it when the markets have been more challenging. As the markets potentially improve, we hope we'll be there with a portfolio of great exploration projects that we generated and that will require the testing necessary to make discoveries.

Gerardo Del Real: Discoveries is what you do. It's in the family history. You've had several high-profile discoveries. I don't think that those are going to be the last ones. I know you have gold projects, copper projects, exposure to silver. I'm excited for you to be working in the western US while Mexico gets its act together as it relates to the mining law and some of the challenges that will pass. But I think it clearly have materialized there over the last couple of years. So really excited to see you in the Western US and, really, can't wait for drills to start turning. I know you have multiple potential drill programs that you're hoping to execute in 2024. Anything to add to that, Morgan?

Morgan Poliquin: I think what I would say is that we take a fairly unique approach to identifying these projects. In Mexico, what we did is a 20-year program where we identified new belts of rocks. Of course, they're not new. They've been there all along. But we identified the potential along these belts of rocks and put them together in a cohesive way that was proprietary to our company and explored them right up to the point where we made three discoveries in these new areas, and I think that's the same approach to western United States. There's very mature and then there's underexplored areas, the Western United States, but we're adding a layer of X marks the spot through innovations in understanding where these specific conditions occur and not always just on Main Street. So we feel that we have a way of identifying high-potential areas where other people aren't necessarily exploring.

So that's the first step. Then the second step is, we have 20 years of utilizing our own drills, as you pointed to, which are the ultimate arbiter of what's there. There are the truth machine, shall we say? If you can drill cheaply, you can drill often. That's, in the past, how we've made our discoveries, we pick these areas that are almost like singularities, areas where unique conditions occur that are permissive for mineral deposits, and then we test them. So that's the objective here. We have the cash to do it, and we hope to repeat our exploration success of the past, and are looking forward to a couple interesting years to look at these new projects.

Gerardo Del Real: It should be a fun and profitable 2024. Excited for it. Morgan, thank you so much for the update.

Morgan Poliquin: Thank you very much, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, chat soon. Cheers.

Morgan Poliquin: Bye.

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