Adventus Mining (ADZN, TSX-V)
56 cents | Market Cap $93 million | Average Volume 150,000 | Fully-Financed to Build El Domo Mine
Really insightful info being shared by CEO Christian-Kargl Simard in Vancouver last week. He’s been saying Adventus and partner Salazar (SRL, TSX-V), who’s got a 25% carried interest, expect to receive ESIA approval from the government within 2 weeks. Simard can’t put out a press release until it’s received, but that’ll be another solid step toward being in production before year-end 2024.
Now let’s recognize Mr. Skott Mealer.
While working for Kinross (K, TSX) Mealer was involved with building the Fruta del Norte mine, now the crown jewel of Lundin Gold(LUG, TSX) – 1 of our favorite Gold stocks. Most recently Mealer managed the restart of Kinross’s La Coipa mine in Chile. Now he’s leading all on-site development, pre-construction, and stakeholder engagement activities for the Curipamba Copper-Gold Project (aka. the El Domo mine).
Originally Mealer thought he was moving to Russia, but plans change! With a wife who’s Ecuadorian and experience working in the country, Ecuador seems the perfect place for him. Simard sounds like he couldn’t be happier to have Mealer leading this thing down the home stretch. Simard said, “We’re shocked about how supportive the government is on our permits. All ministries have been trying to solve problems and get us going as quickly as possible.”
As shown, Copper equivalent grades of plus 5% are planned to be open-pit mined for 6 years. That’s rich material and explains why El Domo passed the 1 in 1,000 test to receive mine financing from industry pros Wheaton Precious (WPM, TSX) and Trafigura.
But that’s the boring mine-building stuff.
Let’s re-recognize Santiago!
Near-term, the biggest catalyst for ADZN and SRL is drilling their Santiago porphyry project. Several holes drilled by Newmont in the 1990’s proved porphyry material is there. 1 hole intersected 0.65% CuEq over 323 m, from surface, and it ended in mineralization. Therefore Newmont didn’t drill deep enough. They stopped too soon (and those were different days for Copper and what constituted a Copper discovery).
A giant geophysical anomaly, from a first-time flyover of the property last year, shows a “wine glass” shaped blob extending down to 1km (and 3 km long).
Starting in June (fingers crossed), Adventus and Salazar will begin drilling 3 deep 1,000-m holes.
0.8% Copper, or more, extending to that type of depth is what speculators have been hot-to-trot for. Such a strike could catalyze a double/triple in these stocks, and in a hurry.
Interesting enough, or not given the current state of the markets, ADZN sits near all-time lows. Adventus‘ market cap is $93 million. $30 million is in the bank. Wheaton and Trafigura have financed the mine to be built. Construction starts this year on what Simard says will be, “The most economic Copper development project in the world. We’re trading at half of our first year’s fully attributable cash flow.”
Salazar owns a 25% stake in the El Domo/Curipamba Project and they’re carried to production.
I continue to prefer Salazar, the exploration brains behind the operation. Salazar offers exposure to everything Adventus is doing, plus they are “The Ecuadorian Exploration Company” with a huge land portfolio acquired by Fredy over multiple decades. As I’ve said before (and they say), just about anybody and everybody wishing to do business in Ecuador pays Fredy a phone call or visit (so he’s got the eyes and ears closest on the ground).
While I sure wish they traded more actively (it is tightly held, though, with the Salazar Family owning about 30%) SRL maintains a 7-year uptrend (trading a couple pennies above its rising 1,000-day SMA) and it’s 500% above its all-time low. SRL has also shown some relative strength in recent weeks, as the stock’s only down 20% or so.