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Latin Metals (TSX-V: LMS)(OTCQB: LMSQF) CEO Keith Henderson on Drilling for Company Making Discoveries in 2023

 

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the President and CEO of Latin Metals, Mr. Keith Henderson. Keith, how are you today?

Keith Henderson: I'm great. How are you?

Gerardo Del Real: I am well, thank you for asking. I was joking off air that it's amazing how smart you feel after a 10 or 15% move, whether that's in the gold price or the copper price in this case, everybody feels really smart again.

Sentiment has definitely changed since the end of 2022. Look, even myself, we've been at this for quite a while now and it's exciting to see copper touch $4.20. It's exciting to see the dollar index still above 100, and gold holding $1,900 very, very convincingly. And it's exciting to see you staking a large sedimentary copper exploration project in the very popular Argentina.

The Mirador Copper project is the latest project that you've staked. You said it ticks a lot of boxes in the news release. I'd love to know what those boxes are because I know you're pretty diligent with these projects.

Keith Henderson: Yeah. Well, the first very important box is that it should be really cheap, and it was. Staking projects is the cheapest way to go in this industry as opposed to buying it off somebody that already owns it and thinks it's worth a fortune. So picking up open ground is great. In this case, the ground is open because I think nobody else has quite thought about what we have thought about.

Our very excellent Exploration Manager, Eduardo Leon, has been giving us some thoughts for over the last year or so. And he came up with the idea. He said, "Well, let's look at all of these sedimentary copper deposits in other parts of the world and now let's look at Salta Province in Argentina. Don't we see exactly the same things happening here? And that being the case, is there not potential for copper? And if that is the case and if we can acquire this ground pretty cheaply, let’s just do it and think about it afterwards."

So that's what we did. We just jumped on it and we thought, "If this is right, we could look very smart here." So we jumped on it before anybody else had a chance to do so. Then while we were finalizing the acquisition, we got on the ground to see what it'd look like.

All we've really done so far is drive around the property that we've acquired. We've taken a look, walked around on the ground and we've managed to find basically exactly what we predicted was going to be there. And this is early stages, but we've come across outcrops rocks sticking out of the ground that look exactly like sedimentary copper. It's a black shale, it's got copper in it. We assayed it, it came up at 2.4% copper. It's got a bunch of vanadium in there, too.

We were surprised to find it so quickly. We have a long way to go. This area's covered. There's not a lot of rocks sticking out of the ground, so we're going to have to get on here and do a bunch of geochemistry and see, get ourselves narrowed down to some smaller areas because this is a very large-scale property. But what good news. To come up with an idea like this and then to walk into the field and find exactly what you predicted that you would find is really wonderful.

The main box that it ticks for me, aside from being cheap, large-scale, and having found what we thought we were going to find, the biggest box of all is how is this going to help us find new, major company partners?

Because major company partners are looking for a certain kind of thing. I think we've talked about this before, the hurdle rate... When big companies like Anglo and Barrack pick up properties, they're looking for 5, 10 million ounces. The same is true in the copper world as well. These companies are looking for big deposits and that's really the box that this ticks.

If we can put together a sedimentary copper project in Salta and if it shares features with the projects that we see elsewhere in the world, it has a really good chance of being a very, very big project. That means that we think that major company partners will be pretty interested in this and we think we'll be able to get a partner for it relatively quickly. So it's all good news. It's worked out perfectly.

It's a beautiful piece of work from Eduardo to come up with this idea that, as far as I know, no other geologist has ever thought through this process and decided that there could be potential for this in Salta and he did it and we acquired the ground and it looks like he could be right. This is such good news for Latin Metals.

Gerardo Del Real: Being able to have proof of concept with also walking onto some high grade sediment-hosted copper mineralization in outcrop almost immediately on a project this size is unique. Just for those of you maybe that are listening or reading, that is not the standard when it comes to large-scale exploration projects, especially when you're looking to prove something that, in this part of the world, hasn't really been proven out.

What comes next? You talked about doing some geochem work. Obviously, the better you're able to define targets, the easier it is going to be to joint venture this, on pretty favorable terms I would imagine, right?

Keith Henderson: Yeah. With this rock in our hand that's copper mineralized and looks like exactly the right rock, this is the first step. We'll run some stream sediment, geochemistry. Stream sediment, it's a method where you can test very large areas with just a single sample, just to give you an indication that over this large property area, where are the hotspots going to be? We would hope to come up with some copper anomalies that will continue to get people excited.

Then we start walking into offices and saying, "Well, look what we have." What's most interesting about we have what we have is that we own it, which sounds funny, but it's easy to come up with an idea and walk into a major company mining office and say, "This is my idea." They might kind of ignore you, but if you say, "This is my idea and I think we are right, and by the way we own all the property," I think that will help get everyone's attention.

Yeah, I think we got a really good chance. So let's say rough schedule over the next three or four months, we should be able to go out there and get the geochemistry done, get the results back, put the story together, talk to a few companies, and hopefully, as quickly as that, we should be able to get some terms and see if we can get the deal done.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, I'll tell you what, you've been brilliant at executing the project generator model. You keep vending in major partners, funding exploration with other people's money, you keep giving shareholders a really good shot at a major discovery in 2023. You still have a tiny market cap; it's slightly higher than when we first started chatting, but frankly, it's still very, very undervalued, in my opinion, given the commodity mix, given the attractiveness of Argentina right now. I know Peru is going, as it usually is, through some instability that will eventually sort itself out. But you got quite a portfolio built up for the current market cap. Again, I think in a business that's high risk, you're providing a lot of shots on goal for a major discovery in 2023.

Anything to add to that, Keith?

Keith Henderson: Yeah, and that jurisdictional risk was... I agree with you, I think Peru will calm down here in the near future, but it is going through a little bit of a funny time. That was our key objective in being in more than one jurisdiction. Luckily, Argentina is most definitely the place to be these days. We've seen it over the last 12 to 18 months. We've seen investment coming in from major companies. It looks and feels like everybody's in Argentina these days. Getting a project like this on our books will only help us to get the attention of all of those other companies.

Gerardo Del Real: Well, great work, again, Keith. Again, I say it every time, I suspect we're going to be chatting pretty frequently. We chatted about a week ago, so I've been proven right thus far.

Keith Henderson: Yeah.

Gerardo Del Real: Keep at it and we'll chat soon. Thank you.

Keith Henderson: Okay, great. Thanks a million.

Gerardo Del Real: Cheers.

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