Mariana Resources Ltd (LON:MARL) Chief Executive Officer Glen Parsons caught up with DirectorsTalk for an exclusive interview to discuss the 3 million ounce gold equivalent resource at the Hot Maden project
Q1: This is now the second day following the announcement of the high grade copper-gold Hot Maden project which has a significant initial resource of 3 million ounce gold equivalent. At an effective 11.2 gram tonne gold equivalent, how do you think the market reacted?
A1: We’re obviously pretty confident with our 3 million ounces there and I suppose the way the market started yesterday, it was very encouraging. I must be honest, I thought we’d probably go way through that 3p level but then we understand it is a very liquid stock and there would be profit taking. I would have expected it to come off a little bit and then actually go through the levels again and unfortunately that didn’t happen so I’m a little bit mixed with the way the market has reacted to this. I think that we’ve delivered here is a phenomenal resource in such a short time and since February on the discovery holes until now, those results that we’ve been putting out really should have been holding and pushing the price up. Unfortunately that hasn’t been the case and we know this is not the best market but still, I would say my reaction would be that I would have expected a lot more out of the market. All I can say is what Mariana had just delivered, that’s really it, and a high grade resource project at that which is extremely attractive to everyone.
Q2: On to the project itself, what is your view of what Hot Maden offers Mariana Resources?
A2: For Mariana, what Hot Maden is really is it’s gone from an exploration story to a development story and a development story with inherent tangible value. So what it offers Mariana, never mind the share price, it really does offer Mariana significant value. With us putting out the resource, there’s now a quantification of first of all the answers. Independent resource specialists, Runge Pincock Minarco, they’ve expedited this resource, they’ve given it a high rating with the indicated category and that really tells us that we have got something significant here, the grade is high, it’s mineable ore, it’s going to be mined by Lidya, they want to mine it so that really is good. Going forward, if you say ‘what is the value for Mariana’, obviously it’s very difficult for me to start stating numbers in terms of value but the good thing is is if you look at the analysts’ reports coming through from yesterday and today, guys are now actually putting value to Mariana or to the project itself and you’ve got the likes of Northland saying on a comparison basis that we could be anywhere up to £91 million, that’s significant in dollar terms and Brandon Hill who are a broker, certainly Peter Rose is sticking his neck out there saying that he though 50 million is on the absolute low side and around 98 million is where we should be. So all I’m saying is analysts are prepared to put their names to numbers now so that’s a whole different set to where we were before, people were very reluctant to give Mariana valuation, here we’re starting to see he project giving itself valuation and hence Mariana’s valuation should come through. So we’re sitting at around £20 million at the moment so there really is significant upside and we would see that so that’s what Hot Maden offers Mariana at the moment.
Q3: What do you think we can expect from Mariana Resources going forward?
A3: We are active, there’s no doubt, we do have a portfolio; we’ve got Suriname, Argentina who are going through the elections, self-funded exploration during the year and then we’ve got Peru as well, drilling is still continuing and that’s the key thing. Drilling is still continuing at Hot Maden, we are looking for extensions of this resource and we know we’re able to grow this resource and the it’s also moving through the study so a lot of news flow going to carry on in terms of portfolio but there’s going to be some drill results coming through from Turkey and that’s what we can look forward to going forward.
Q4: When can we expect those drill results?
A4: Over the last 2 months things have slowed down as we’ve told the market but things will be picking up now going into September. We have got hole 18 that was in our last news release where we put out visuals so we are expecting those back shortly so that’ll be good for the market but over the next month or so, we will certainly be seeing more drill results coming from Hot Maden.
