Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTC: LMSQF) CEO Keith Henderson on Securing Drill Permit for Organullo Gold Project, Salta Province, Argentina

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the CEO of Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTC: LMSQF), Mr. Keith Henderson. Keith, how are you this morning?

Keith Henderson: I'm great. I enjoy talking to you, but I especially enjoy talking to you when I've got some good news.

Gerardo Del Real: Yeah. I couldn't have said it better myself. Look, let's get right into it. Gold is trading close to the $3,400 level. Silver's above 34, looking lucky it wants to break out. Copper is pushing towards new record high prices. As a company and as a group, we've been waiting for 2025 to materialize into what we thought 2024 was going to be, which is an environment with multiple drill programs, and multiple drill permits, with major partners advancing projects. You had some news this morning securing yet another permit that's going to facilitate that later this year. So first off, congrats. Second, can you provide the details and the context, please?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, thanks very much. Yeah, anyone following the company will have been waiting for this for a while, things take time, we know. It's critical to get permitting, it's critical to take the right steps with the communities, and not to rush things, and to get to the point where you've got the permit under the right circumstances, and I think that's what AngloGold have helped us to do here. So AngloGold have optioned into our Organullo property in Salta province, as you'll remember. It's a fabulous target. It's an interesting project, it's been around for years, it's been drilled, actually, by quite a few companies, but always in the same place, and everyone got kind of completely sidetracked by drilling around this kind of... I don't know, it's like a little historical underground mine, everyone drill their holes in the same places.

But they all found some gold, Gerardo, but it was never good enough to make the difference. AngloGold have a completely different view of this project, they really do. And from the moment that they optioned it from us, they've been clear about that. They're a very big company, as you know, they've got very high hurdle rates. They're looking for projects of the potential for five million ounce plus, and if they don't see that kind of potential, they're not interested.

The targets that they've generated on the Organullo project really for them, I think stem back right to the days in the early 2000s when they were making significant discoveries in Colombia. Same kind of rock systems, same kind of environment for mineralization. And I think these guys really see so many similarities between what they saw prior to making those discoveries, and what they think they see at Organullo. And that's why their confidence is so high in terms of the type of deposit, in terms of the potential grade, the potential number of ounces.

So it couldn't be any more exciting for me to have a group that's so technically competent, excited about a project like this. This could be transformational for us, and it really gets me excited.

Gerardo Del Real: No, look, I think you said that really, really well. I want to stress the fact that, yes, as shareholders of the company that have been watching the company for a while, the permits took a little bit longer than anybody would like, because frankly, we all want everything yesterday, and we want to see drill bits turning immediately. That's just kind of the nature of the business. But I got to commend you and the team for doing the social licensing and the permitting aspect of it correctly and methodically, because every day, geopolitical volatility and jurisdictional prudence is becoming more and more important. So congrats on that front. Can you speak to the efforts there, and that approach?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, look, it's community meetings, it's getting onsite, it's telling people what you're going to do. You're never going to come across an area or a community that universally are welcoming a company in to do work, it just never happens. It's not more difficult in Argentina than elsewhere, it's difficult everywhere. And it's just a process that I think cannot be rushed, and that's really the key thing.

And the governments know that too, and the governments such as the provincial government in Salta, which issued this permit, they don't issue the permits until they think enough has been done, and the company has performed. AngloGold know what they're doing, they've been really great in helping us. They've been mining at Cerro Vanguardia in Santa Cruz province for 20 years, and it's a superb operation, it operates to a really high standard. And that really helps them in terms of persuading the provincial governments of other provinces that they're the right company that can do this kind of work. Finding the right partner is so key on so many levels, but also in this level, it's so key in terms of working with communities as well, and getting permits, and they're definitely the right partner, they've been great.

Gerardo Del Real: No, listen, I mentioned this is a permit number two within what I consider co-flagships, so 2 out of 3, can you speak to the third one there? And can you provide context on the first one, just for those that may be new to the company and maybe saying, "Okay, well, you just did a very strategic financing with some very strategic shareholders that I'm very familiar with." I think everybody's familiar with. So you're cashed up, you have 2 of the 3 major permits that you've been seeking, and diligently working on the third. Can you speak to just the overview of the company, and where you stand?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, look, you've been watching us for a while, we don't spend money. This prospect generator model, if it's done right, and if you stick to your guns and do it the way it's supposed to be done, you don't need a ton of money to run the company. We run on less than $2 million a year, and most of that comes from cash coming from the partners that are incoming to the projects.

So as you mentioned, we did a small financing, that's us cashed up for the rest of the year, there's no more financing coming, and it takes us through part of next year as well. And with a few more partners coming in, and a bit more cash coming in, we may not even need to finance next year at all. So that's kind of where we are going in terms of being a prospect generator, and hopefully becoming the holy grail of prospect generators where you're essentially self-funding.

We've got three main projects in Argentina that are our flagships in the country. One is AngloGold Ashanti, which we just spoke about. Another is Cerro Bayo. That's a project that we had optioned out to Barrick, another fabulous partner, another really big mining company, and another company that doesn't come to look at projects that they don't love. In the end, that one fell away for reasons that are completely unrelated to the project itself, in my view. And Barrick were very generous with their time after terminating, in terms of telling us what they thought about the project from a technical perspective, and encouraging us to continue.

So we went ahead, we've got the permit on that one ready to go. So whichever partner comes in to do that project has already got a permit. We're speaking with a bunch of companies and it's just a matter of finding the best deal. And again, I'm not going to rush that process either, let's just kind of keep going. When we feel like we've got the best possible deal that we can get, and the right partner, we'll move forward. And we expect that that will be drilled this year as well. So that's the second of the three. Third project is Esperanza, which is our copper-gold project in San Juan province. That one's sitting with a partner called Moxico. Moxico is a copper-producing company, their mine is in Zambia, they've got projects in Saudi as well, they've been moving into Argentina at pace.

What a surprise they've been to me. Honestly, I didn't know about them until I knew about them. They're a private company, so they're not necessarily out there, and you don't necessarily hear about these guys, but they're doing a fabulous job. And again, just like AngloGold Ashanti, they're so technically competent. They've just got some fabulous people around the company, and they know exactly what they're doing. They've been on the ground at Esperanza with a surface-related exploration permit, a prospecting permit for... They got that in October last year, I think. They've been exploring basically since November, almost on a continual basis. They'll be going for a permit this year, and expect to be drilling this year as well. And so that's three projects.

When you start to think about what that means for us, you put those three projects together, we can expect to see something like $19 million spent on our projects by our partners, and you contrast that with what we've just raised in the market, which was a tiny financing of $1.3 million. I go, "Okay, what a great ratio, what great value that is." We're not diluting the shareholders, asset-level dilution, lots of opportunities, lots of really high quality projects as we can see by the types of partners that we're attracting, and just such an exciting year for us now that we get these drill programs started.

Gerardo Del Real: No, look, a lot to like, a lot of catalysts here in the second half of the year. Congrats on the hard work. Great to see the hard work pay off. Looking forward to having you back on here soon. I suspect that the news flow will continue here for the remainder 2025. And again, I want to emphasize, it's going to happen within the backdrop of, I think, record-high commodity prices continuing to push forward here this year. Anything to add to that, Keith?

Keith Henderson: No, nothing. We covered it all. Let's save it for the next call. I'll look forward to speaking to you again. There's going to be lots of news, we'll have lots of opportunities to speak in the coming months.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. Appreciate the time as always, sir. Thank you.

Keith Henderson: Super. Thanks a million. Cheers.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

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