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Almadex Minerals (TSX-V: DEX)(OTC: AAMMF) CEO Morgan Poliquin on US$10M Royalty Sale & Unlocking the Value of its Vast Mineral Property Portfolio
Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the president & CEO of Almadex Minerals — Mr. Morgan Poliquin. Morgan, it's been a bit. How have you been?
Morgan Poliquin: Excellent, thank you. And yourself?
Gerardo Del Real: I've been well. It's an interesting time in the world as I'm sure you're well aware. But no look, we're busy… it's post-summer doldrums… it's September… tons of news. And you had some news today that me, as a shareholder, smiled about.
Looks like you have an agreement to sell the 2% NSR on the Elk property for US$10.63 million. Now, anybody that's familiar with you and your background knows what you do best is explore and discover economic deposits. And I am excited to see what you're able to do with this US$10.6 million given the quality of the portfolio you've spent decades putting together for Almadex Minerals.
Can you comment a bit on the announcement here?
Morgan Poliquin: Yeah, thank you very much. Well, look, we have quite an assortment of assets. We've got, obviously, the royalty portfolio. And I think this agreement speaks very, very clearly to the value there. A lot of the royalties derive from our exploration, which is the real thrust of the company. That's the energy. That's the lifeblood.
And we are really looking forward to pursuing the exploration ideas that we have. We tend to look for things that don't exist and find them, and that process has been quite successful for us. So the royalty portfolio is, obviously, something that can sustain that effort.
The third thing we have is we have a number of diamond drills, and we’ve put them to good use on our own properties over the years quite successfully. We think that finding mines are all about the proof-machine, which is the diamond drill, which is very expensive to do with third parties, typically.
And if you have your own drills, you can speed up the process. You can reduce the cost of the process and, thereby, fueling that engine. The odds of finding a mine are very long. I like to use sporting metaphors in Canada here… we talk about putting more pucks on net… If you don't shoot the puck, you can’t score… and the more you shoot, the more you score!
So that's kind of the three prongs of our company, and, really, we've been able to drill for third parties as well and use that to sustain us in that way. So Almadex is inheriting this legacy of years of prospecting in the form of these royalties, in the form of building a drilling enterprise, and in the form of the projects that we have in the company that are the result of the exploration.
So that's a long way of saying… I'm really excited about the future and, quite frankly, using this new money to explore and find the next set of projects with the aim of making a discovery, of course.
Gerardo Del Real: I believe that your market cap is sub-C$14 million. It's now mostly backed by cash, right? What do you plan here in the next quarter or two, and how do you plan to explore that substantial portfolio that you've developed over the years?
Morgan Poliquin: Well, there's two ways of exploring. Obviously, you can drill your own projects, and that's been successful for us. But you can't drill them all at any one time… and we also like partnerships.
We have a company called Abacus that's, I believe, currently drilling a property of ours in Nevada. We had a partnership in Nevada on another property we're really excited about, and that company wasn't able to proceed due to some financing issues. And we've had partners this year that were unable to get work done due to a variety of logistical issues.
So we actually have a number of projects that are optioned out, and we want to keep going with those partnerships while we drill certain properties ourselves. So that is still the plan going forward. And obviously, we want to compliment that with doing some exploration work. And typically, we've been working in North America, and we'll continue to do so.
Obviously, COVID changes your perspective. And we have a lot of ideas in Canada, in the US, and in Mexico. And we focus a lot on Mexico. And I see us being more diverse. I see us focusing more on some of the places we used to work a lot more in; Canada and Nevada. But obviously, Mexico is a place we'll continue to work in.
Gerardo Del Real: Excellent! Well, I'm looking forward to seeing how you allocate the capital. Congratulations on unlocking substantial value from just one corner of that portfolio. Anything to add to that, Morgan?
Morgan Poliquin: No, thanks for the opportunity. Hopefully that was a good summary for people, and thank you very much for having us on and highlighting this.
Gerardo Del Real: Alright, hopefully we're chatting soon and more frequently, Morgan. Thank you.
Morgan Poliquin: Thank you.
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