Murchison Minerals (MUR, TSX-V)
13 cents | Market Cap $21 million
We’re in the throes of a Nickel bull market, and the best value we see across the Nickel exploration front relative to current market cap remains Murchison Minerals (MUR, TSX-V). CEO is a former senior management guy with NexGen Energy (NXE, TSX) and a large property is showing Nickel sulphide mineralization all over the place with historic drill holes that have hit high-grade. VTEM is lighting up like a Christmas tree. Doesn’t get much better than this for a speculative Nickel stock at 13 cents, believe me. We were saying the same thing about an Eskay Camp Nickel play in the low teens for months back in 2017 and it then became a 40-bagger, as we all remember.
News out this morning from Murchison. Sometimes when you see a highly anticipated press release finally hit the wire it can cause a sense of pause. Hold your breath a sec – you know the details can create a sharp drop or sharp rise in share price, and therefore your brokerage statement. Relating to drill results you’d prefer to see assay numbers hit the headline. No headline number often means poor or average results, so I was a bit concerned, at first, with Murchison’s news today.
We’ve been waiting and waiting (patiently) on assay results from PYC.
Who would’ve thunk we’d get assays from Murchison’s 3rd target (Syrah) ahead of PYC!
I didn’t see that coming. And my initial reaction was, hmm…weird timing?
Murchison has a way of keeping speculators guessing (i.e., expanding land 4 x, executing warrants in advance). Maybe there’s no grander strategy and they’re really still waiting on (complete hole) assays from PYC, as Troy Boisjoli said in his video snippet. Or maybe they’ve received partial assays from PYC and rather than keep us waiting they decided to release backpack drill results from Syrah, as opposed to holding and releasing those afterward.
Could be overthinking but this move might set the table nicely – now when PYC results are released (assuming we get at least 1 or 2holes better than 0.5 % NiEq over 50 m, better than 1% NiEq should be enough to light a fire under MUR) speculators can look forward connecting dots to a 3rd deposit at Syrah.
Keeping in mind Barr de Fer has a known resource footprint (PYC could be 2 and Syrah would be 3).
With Syrah showing up to 0.69% NiEq from 4 samples (every sample was above 0.42% NiEq), similar to surface samples from PYC, if we get the 50 m of 0.5% NiEq from diamond drilling speculators can project out to Syrah working, too. Beep mat, geophysics, and backpack drill holes could then be seen as a reliable exploration method for this large land package.
President and CEO Troy Boisjoli commented:
“We are highly encouraged by the early results at HPM, which continue to demonstrate the potential for mining-camp scale Nickel-Copper-Cobalt mineralization. This comes at a time when the need for battery-metals projects in premier mining jurisdictions like Quebec has never been higher. The 2022 exploration plan for HPM includes property-wide geophysics, prospecting, and diamond drilling – the drilling will focus on high-priority targets and will be optimized once the pending assay results from PYC are received in the coming weeks. With the team Murchison has established, the demonstrated exploration process, and the highly prospective targets at our HPM Project we are extremely positive about where Murchison is going in 2022.”
Key words there, for me, are “the team”.
It’s pretty rare to find a situation with a team capable of discovering and promoting. Surprises happen, sometimes people get lucky, but with Murchison we know what they’ve got a capable team in place right now. Boisjoli & Co. know how to put a presentation together, brand a business, and market the story. Look no further than their new slide deck and today’s Twitter post (linked above).
Every company occasionally gets around to writing a press release (many of those are treated like toilet paper). Very few offer the video snippet with additional context.
Atlas Salt (SALT, TSX-V) is another rarity.
Details folks! Presentation is key. Perception can become reality.
Looking at his track record Dr. Peter Lightfoot is either really lucky or really good, and he’s leading on geology and targeting for MUR. Lightfoot must be like a kid in a candy store looking at all this ground.
Then behind the scenes Murchsion’s got “mega holder” Don Johnson. Founder of goeasy Ltd. (GSY, TSX), Johnson’s got 35 million shares of MUR and he’s already really rich – he ain’t in MUR for a flip. I’d imagine he’s in this for a multi-hundred million asset sale, or bust.
JC Potvin, Executive Chairman, is a steady hand who’s done just such an M&A transaction before.
Bullish trend firmly in place for MUR. Serious scale for multiple Nickel-Copper-Cobalt deposits, and close enough to existing infrastructure.
1% NiEq over 50 m or more should be enough to kick MUR to the next level.
Either PYC results are slightly disappointing and they shift attention to drilling Syrah. Perhaps the stock drops to 9 or 10 cents on that news. Or PYC results are solid and it’s GAME ON for drilling PYC and Syrah starting soon.