Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Fury Gold Mines (TSX: FURY)(NYSE-Amer: FURY) CEO Tim Clark and SVP Exploration Bryan Atkinson on Hitting Multiple Zones of High-Grade Gold Mineralization at Flagship Eau Claire Gold Project, James Bay, Quebec

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Fury Gold Mines and the Senior Vice President of Exploration for Fury — Mr. Bryan Atkinson and Mr. Tim Clark. Gentlemen, how are you two today?

Tim Clark: Great. 

Bryan Atkinson: Great.

Gerardo Del Real: It's great to have you both on. Let's get right into it. There are a lot of people because of the recent consolidation in the gold space — and it's funny to call it that because we're nibbling near all-time highs here — but with the recent pullback, there are a lot of people that don't quite have gold and silver as a hedge for the volatility that I see kind of developing all over the place. 

We've had conversations, Tim, where we've talked about how Fury actually provides a really great mixture of both while also giving you leverage to a great technical team and a great balance sheet. And so I thought with the recent release, it'd be a great time to have you all on to speak to the position the company is in. And maybe you'll take that one, Tim.

And then, Bryan — I'm not a geologist — so I'd love to get the geologist and informed take on the recent release where you hit 31.77 grams per tonne of gold and what that means. This was at the Hinge Target. But Tim, I'd love to start with an overview of the company.

Tim Clark: Sure. I think you guys have talked about a couple of the hot items here. As I think about this from my capital markets days as investors to simplify the story, the view is that there's a very good chance we could be going into a nice upcycle, if not potentially big cycle in silver and gold. 

Gold I think has shown a lot of resiliency and back and forth with the Fed. But if you think this is a possibility, what you want to do is you don't want to own the big names, you want to own the small names where all the torque is. 

That brings us into the junior space and there are a lot of names to choose from. I typically always felt that the quality of management and the financeability were number one and two. And so, as I've been at this company for two and a half years, and the goal has been to position ourselves to be the best in class both in terms of financing and best in class in terms of how we spend our money.

And at the same time, we've been bringing forth and doing drilling and exercising the best options for ourselves to create value for investors so that when this market starts to go up, we're going to get the limelight of attention. 

And the other thing I would point out is very few juniors are listed on the New York Stock Exchange. It's a big item because most of the money is in the US. And even Europeans will prefer to trade the New York Stock Exchange over the TSX. When money does come in, we're going to be well positioned on the trading side to capture a lot of that. And that's as simple as I can put the story.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't agree with you more. I have to ask about the appointment of two new board directors in 2023 because I think that the background that they bring speaks to the quality of the projects and speaks to the team and the future prospects of it.

Tim Clark: I think it's something that people shouldn't underestimate. Now that I'm on the corporate side, I value the quality of the board far more than I did. They set culture and they set the tone. 

We’ve brought on two new people. One was Brian Christie who is our new chairman, and the other is Isabelle Cadieux who's another director. The reason why we brought them on was because we just wanted to high-grade everything as we're moving through the company. And if you don't have a good solid board, that limits you. 

Brian Christie, in particular — both of them are field geologists by training — but Bryan spent 20, 30, 40 years in the capital markets as an analyst and also as a banker. He spent the last 10 years as the senior head of marketing for Agnico Eagle. Agnico Eagle is well regarded as the number one marketing firm in Canada in terms of mining.

Sean Boyd, I believe, is one of the top CEOs we have in Canada in mining. And it's no mistake that we got Bryan on board to help us lean into those big brothers to help the company going forward in making these right connections and whatnot. 

Isabelle, on the other hand — again, it's important to add a geologist to the team — but she spent 25 years only investing in small cap junior companies in Quebec. She brings those Quebec relationships; her husband is the CEO of Azimut, full disclosure. And she's as connected as can be. She's a really sharp lady. She brings a lot of class to how we think about things. And I think that the confidence should go up with investors that you have really good people who are investing themselves in a small company. It says a lot. 

And I've gone to both of them and I've asked them, ‘Why do you like Fury over a lot of the other ones that you could be doing?’ And not to toot Bryan’s and my own horn but they love the energy. They love the thoughtfulness that we are constantly looking to improve things and that having a balance sheet and the assets we have, there's a lot of potential to win. And that's exciting.

Gerardo Del Real: Bryan, we talked treasury, we talked capital markets expertise, we talked liquidity via the New York Stock Exchange listing. Let's talk assets. And specifically, I want to get into the most recent release; I mentioned those spectacular results at the Hinge Target. 

It didn't go unnoticed by me that the team spoke to the increased confidence in the geological model. And I was wondering if, hopefully, you would be able to expand on that.

Bryan Atkinson: Yeah, definitely. We went back to basic first principles when we acquired this project three years ago and just tore it apart and started having a look and see where the opportunities were. Two years ago, we stepped out into the Hinge Zone with a couple of holes and, lo and behold, we found 19 stacked veins of gold mineralized quartz veins. 

Since then, we've gone back out there, and we've modeled what we have. And this year, we were hitting within a meter or two of where our predicted intercepts would be. Really consistent, really predictable, which is nice. It's kind of boring when you're exploring… but that's good because boring builds ounces. 

And when we have hits like we announced here — and, obviously, the headline hit is 31.7 grams over 3.5 meters — but there are other things in there. There's 65 grams over half a meter; there's 5 grams over 3.5 meters. And we're shallow… we're only 200 to 250 meters below surface. 

We're immediately adjacent and contingent with the 850W Zone resource; the historic resource. These are going straight into the resource update that we're going to be putting out in early April of this year.

Gerardo Del Real: You clearly, obviously, have assays pending. I would love for you to set the table for 2024. Tim, if you could touch on that briefly. What can investors and speculators and shareholders expect from Fury in 2024?

Tim Clark: First off, we haven't gotten all of our drill holes in… so we've got another release there. We've also got a resource update that we're hopefully going to get out shortly thereafter; what Bryan has pointed me to is the end of the first quarter, beginning of the second quarter. And I think that's going to give some clarity as to what we've got and have done the last three years. 

But going forward, since we've done a lot on this resource, Eau Claire, what we also want to do is start exploring the property more. We've spent a couple of years doing a lot of survey work. We’ve poked a few holes out at Percival. But there's a lot of other anomalies across the property. 

And when we sit down with Agnico and Newmont and others, they love hearing about the Eau Claire resource because that's a base. But they're really excited about what we might have because we own 30 kilometers of this Cannard Defamation Zone, and we're seeing a lot within a kilometer of this zone that could be interesting.

The other part would be we'd like to get up to the joint venture. The joint venture has always been on the top of our list as a potentially really good place to explore. The best place to find gold is next to a big operating mine, which Éléonore is. And we are hoping Newmont is more open and excited about doing something this year… so we're waiting to hear back from them and how much we can get up there. 

And the plan is to basically step out more. I don't think we have to spend as much to get as far in terms of exploration. We're not looking to ramp things up and diluting the company by raising a lot of money. But we've got C$7 million in the bank right now, so we're pretty set there. And that's the plan.

Gerardo Del Real: Bryan, geologically, what has you the most excited?

Bryan Atkinson: Yeah, as Tim alluded to, some of those targets that we have out to the east around Percival. At Percival this year, we just recently put out a meter and a half at 279 grams out there — so it's high grade. It's a really nice system out there. And we've got some really compelling targets that we followed up on this year. Look for some geochem and targeting to come out with that with the last of the 2023 drill results from out that way. 

I think the discovery potential for this year and the step away from the resource and going, not full on, but a larger focus on making a new discovery is going to be very exciting this year with the knowledge we've gained over the last three years on the project.

Gerardo Del Real: Bryan, I understand you'll be at the Vancouver Resource Investment Conference. I will as well, of course. If anyone is out there, please stop by and say hello. You will be there this year, correct?

Bryan Atkinson: Yep, myself and our manager of investor relations, Margo, will be there. So yeah, stop by the booth.

Gerardo Del Real: Fantastic. Tim, anything to add to that?

Tim Clark: No, I just go back to what you were talking about in the beginning in that this is a unique combination between the leverage between silver and gold with Dolly Varden. Dolly, obviously, is a huge piece to us. They've got a third of their drill holes still pending, and we'll see what Hecla does on the back of that. 

And then, of course, we have a lot of things we're working on this year. So I think it's going to be a better year for gold by a long shot and for Fury.

Gerardo Del Real: I couldn't agree more. Gentlemen, thank you so much for your time today. I appreciate it.

Tim Clark: Thank you… great to catch up.

Bryan Atkinson: Thank you.

Gerardo Del Real: Alright… cheers, guys.

Tim Clark: Cheers.