Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Cross River Ventures (CSE: CRVC)(OTC: CRSVF) CEO Alex Klenman on Multiple Sector & Company Catalysts

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Cross River Ventures, Mr. Alex Klenman. Alex, how are you today? You're on the road, I understand.

Alex Klenman: I am, yeah. And the greatest thing about coming on with you is your introductions are just on a level by themselves. So anyway, yeah, happy to be here as, as always happy to chat.

Gerardo Del Real: I appreciate the kind words. Listen, let's get right into it, and the cause for the enthusiasm, right? I think we've gone through a consolidation in the gold space that's lasted about 12 months now, right? Going into the 13th month, it's been a year long consolidation.

A lot of the better names, regardless of quality assets or technical prowess have been beaten down 30, 40 some 50%, which to me presents an absolute generational opportunity to buy stocks for pennies on the dollar. And I actually think that Q4 is going to be one of the more consequential ones for the gold price, for the juniors, and I think we're going to see excitement back in the space.

We had news this morning, Mr. Powell did what I assumed he would always do, which is tell the market, "Worry not, market, I will give you plenty of heads up before there's even consideration for a rate hike. Maybe we'll taper, but if the market throws a tantrum I'll change my mind," which is what he's done for years on end, right?

Alex Klenman: Right.

Gerardo Del Real: And so the gold price reacted favorably, we're right back at $18.15, silver's at $24, copper's back at $4.27. And meanwhile, you're sampling up to 126 grams per tonne gold in Ontario, Canada. Let's get into your thoughts on gold, and then let's talk about the recent phase one field work in Canada.

Alex Klenman: Yeah, you bet. No, I agree a hundred percent with your assessment there of the last year, and yeah, we can see the deals out there, the discounts that are available and, yeah, it could very well be a generational opportunity when you look at these valuations. And I'm a gold bug unfortunately, or fortunately, however you look at it, and so I'm a big believer in where we're going to go. And there's no reason why we can't get back to those levels we saw briefly at the end of 2020, and I think it's in the cards, and I'm looking forward to it.

And that brings me to obviously to Cross River and where we're at, and trading at a discount compared to where we've been. But we check a lot of boxes and you and I have had that discussion several times. But anyway, we put out news a couple of days ago regarding some summer work programs that we were completing and continuing at some of our projects. And yeah, we've got some great numbers, a lot of double digits, Manitou up to 26 grams, Dent-Jackson up to 17 grams, and Shabu up to 126 grams. And that's fantastic, that's the kind of stuff we want to see moving forward as we vector towards drilling.

Obviously, we talk a lot about our McVicar project, 12,000 hectors. We have a new deck on our site, it would be great for people to go to crossriverventures.com and check out our new deck. There's some maps and some graphics in there that really put into perspective the land package that we have and the positivity that comes with those. And everything's under-explored, even with the news that we put out the other day. If you go and you dig in, these are under-explored land packages in and around known deposits on very prolific Greenstone belts in a great place to work.

Gerardo Del Real: Very well said. Where's the market cap right now?

Alex Klenman: Yeah, let's do some math. So I think we're at 17 cents today. We have what, 33, 34 million shares out. So do the back of the napkin and you tell me.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah, well that puts you right at sub $6 million Canadian, which again, with the prowess of this technical team, I remember gold bull cycles where you could have taken Cross River public tomorrow with this technical team and you would have commanded a $40 to $50 million market cap just based alone on the caliber of people. You add in the projects and you add in the fact that you're already starting to get some earlier stage, but very, very good results. It's hard to reconcile a $6 million market cap unless you're doing what I've been doing, which is writing checks and adding stock in the better names with the better teams. Because I do believe that I'll be well, well, well rewarded for the speculation.

Alex Klenman: Right. No, that's a great point because I'm a firm believer if we took Cross River and dropped in Newfoundland and our 28,000 Hector land package was in Newfoundland with this tech team, we probably would be a $40 or $50 million market cap just based on that because Newfoundland's so hot. But it's taking a little bit of attention away from places like Northwestern Ontario, which is, geologically speaking, probably the best place on the planet to find economic gold deposits. And here we are, Newfoundland is a phenomenon right now and there's tons of money pouring in there. That doesn't negate or detract from the positivity going on in Northwestern Ontario. Those Greenstone belts are prolific, their endowment is 300 million ounces and we're right there. We have big packages, obviously our McVicar project is our flagship.

We hope to drill in Q4, we're heading towards that now. There shouldn't be any reason why we wouldn't be, we're just kind of honing the targets. Our geologists are on the ground right now at McVicar doing some preliminary work that leads us to drilling. We've flown LIDAR there, we're using those results, the interpretations of the LIDAR material to get us closer to those priority drill targets. We're using a Geoprobe System. These are all newer, more modern exploration techniques that have never been applied in places like McVicar and elsewhere, our other packages.

So we're going to get something interesting here in the end. When you take the totality of a land package and you combine it with the tech team and you remind people that we have 34 million shares out. We're very early stage in terms of our cap structure. Yeah, we're certainly worth a good look as I like to say.

Gerardo Del Real: You mentioned the geologic endowment. I think it's important to point out how stable the jurisdiction is, right? McVicar already has its permits, you're vectoring in, you're being very diligent in selecting drill targets. But you're permitted for this, correct?

Alex Klenman: Yeah, we are in certain places in certain ways, but there's no issue in terms of getting permits and jurisdictionally speaking, Northwestern Ontario is favorable to exploration and there's a lot of working mines. Obviously we're east of Red Lake, but looking at Red Lake for example. It took a great bear discovery south of Red Lake to bring the attention back to Red Lake. It took Newfound Gold, a generational discovery in Newfoundland, to get people excited about Newfoundland, but prior to those discoveries, the gold was there. And you look at Northwestern Ontario, and that endowment and how many mines and things are in that sub-province in the Archean belt, and you realize there's massive opportunity there.

They're all under-explored. These were big land packages that were controlled by companies like BHP. And post Bre-X, everyone cut and ran and these large land packages fell into a smaller hands, prospectors, smaller companies that played it safe. They would twin a hole or they'd do some sampling, they'd raise a little bit of money and they keep going in that direction. You don't want to use the term lifecycle, but it certainly was a slower, more methodical way to get things done and not much happened.

So you've got this huge gap. And then here we are, we come in now and consolidate these packages with modern exploration techniques. And why I brought the deck up, I think it's important to go look in there, one of our tech team members, Lori Paslawski, is a bit of a savant. She puts things together, which gets all the historical data. For McVicar, for example, it was held by multiple companies and multiple prospectors in separate land packages and we consolidated all of them. No one had ever taken a cumulative look at all of that data and superimposed it onto the claim package. And then you suddenly see things from a bird's eye view that you couldn't necessarily see when it was piecemeal and broken up. So we have a different look, a different way to, first of all, visualize where we're working and then you combine the modern techniques and things begin to take shape. And when you get into it, if you do your due diligence on Cross River, you're going to see some exciting things.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, we'll make sure to put a link to the new corporate presentation. I'm excited for Q4, I'm excited for conferences and picking back up again. I know that this Delta variant has kind of made a lot of things questionable, we have fires where you're at right now. It's a bit of a wonky world out there to say the least. But there's also a lot to be excited about. And, again, with the valuations we're seeing across the space, I think for anyone that's going to dabble or speculate in the resource sector, especially the juniors, now is absolutely the time to be fine tuning that list.

Alex Klenman: Absolutely, absolutely. And a good portfolio has a small percentage or a good percentage of space allocated to explorers. Because your return on a successful exploration and impactful discovery is clear. And so make room for explorers, find the best ones, and I think if you like Northwestern Ontario, you're certainly going to like Cross River.

Gerardo Del Real: Agreed, well said. Thank you so much for your time, Alex.

Alex Klenman: Appreciate it, Gerardo, as always. Thank you so much.

Gerardo Del Real: All right. Bye now.