Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Dolly Varden Silver (TSX-V: DV)(OTC: DOLLF) CEO Shawn Khunkhun on Continuing to Hit High-Grade Silver Mineralization

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Dolly Varden Silver, Mr. Shawn Khunkhun. Sean, it's great to have you on. How are you today, sir?

Shawn Khunkhun: I'm doing excellent, Gerardo. Feeling very grateful.

Gerardo Del Real: Well listen, a lot to be grateful for. You and I saw each other at the New Orleans Investment Conference. The conference was great. Dolly Varden obviously had a lot of the participants' attention, and the news you put out today is nothing short of spectacular. Once again, you just hit 461 grams per tonne silver equivalent over 26.99 meters. That includes 2,260 grams per tonne silver equivalent over half a meter. This on an 81-meter step out at Wolf. Congratulations. I'd love the context on it.

Shawn Khunkhun: Yeah, thanks, Gerardo. It's been a really big week for Dolly Varden, but specifically looking at these results, we've got seven deposits on the property. Two are past producing mines. We're talking about today as the Wolf deposit. And Wolf has really been, I would say, the most significant expansion of new mineralization and discovery at the project and what started as a vein at surface, we've now got about a kilometer of strike length, and what we're finding is as we drill this further and further down dip the vein, we're drilling 30 meters of mineralization, 27 meters. This is not only a high grade silver vein, but it's extremely strong width. And what makes today's news particularly unique and special and different from previous news releases is Dolly Varden is a high grade project. We have on average about 300 grams per tonne of silver, which we also got in this intercept. But the difference was we've just tagged into a big base metal zone, and that base metal zone has increased the grade and gotten us an additional 50%. And so we reported 461 grams of silver equivalent over 27 meters.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, listen, there's a reason that you just closed a $10 million strategic investment by Hecla. You and I spoke a few weeks back and I mentioned that I thought that Dolly Varden seemed like a logical takeout target. The positioning is interesting. Did you want to comment on that a bit?

Shawn Khunkhun: Yeah, and what I was going about talking about, it's been a big week for Dolly Varden. We closed the 10 million investment from Hecla on Thursday, and I think it's a big thing in this market, and you know this well, it's very difficult. With a $500 venture exchange, it might as well be at zero. There is no interest out there for the 1500 companies, and so there's maybe 200 that have projects that can be moved forward and get some financing. And so for us to be able to do a financing at virtually no discount with no warrants and pay no fees on it, I think is very good for our shareholders.

And I really feel like we sold the shares to a group that is not going to be a seller of stock in the future. So that's really important is we've sold the securities to a sticky shareholder. But most importantly, I think what Hecla has demonstrated here, they've been interested in Dolly Varden for over a decade, but they've gone from investing a few hundred thousand dollars a year to in 2022, investing $10 million and once again in 2023 investing $10 million. So now they're up to a 15% ownership stake. And I think it really goes to show that they are celebrating what they're seeing with the drill bit, and they think this project has the potential to become economic.

Gerardo Del Real: Speaking of the drill bit, what comes next? Lots of assays pending. You mentioned the seven deposits. We all know the exploration upside is substantial. Walk us through the next couple of quarters, Shawn. Exciting times, obviously.

Shawn Khunkhun: Yeah, so about 51,000 meters this year. That was done in 115 drill holes. We have 70 of those drill holes still to report, so the majority of the drilling has not been reported. And so those are the catalysts and we've seen the share price appreciate, and it's been on the back of all this discovery news. Today's news is one of three result oriented press releases we've had out, and the other results have been good. 381 grams of silver over 30 meters, about 350 grams of silver over 18 meters. The results are actually getting better, and I'm hoping that the seventy or so holes that we're going to report are going to continue to show the rich nature of the screwing deposit.

Gerardo Del Real: Looking forward to those results. Thank you as always for your time, Shawn. As I mentioned, exciting times for Dolly Varden and shareholders.

Shawn Khunkhun: Thanks for having me on, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: All right, we'll chat again soon.

Shawn Khunkhun: Thank you.

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