For a junior mining company, it's tough getting some love when others around you are splashing around with eye-popping results. I'm a holder of Galway Metals (GWM.V, C$0.31), so what you're about to read will be colored as I'm probably biased. It's not long, take it with a grain of salt and I'll try to write it down as objectively as possible.
I've written before on them and a lot has happened since. If you want to read a more detailed article on them, you'll find these under my name. I'll just focus on their Clarence Stream project in New Brunswick now, as their other project in Quebec won't see a spotlight until after the winter drill program. I'll warn you though, it's a bit difficult to present this company because they have multiple zones and the visuals aren't helping. The corporate presentation is messy as well so be warned.
The Clarence Stream project, currently has a resource of 667,000oz of gold at an average grade of 2.2g/t. Nothing splashy over here.
Since Galway got this project (mid 2016), they made three additional discoveries on it, in the vicinity of the two zones in resource. One of these discoveries, was made early this year with a rather splashy hole of 7.3g/t over 36.7m, (incl 38.1g/t over 6.5m). This prompted a three bagger in two months time for those that bought the lows of tax loss selling 2018. High five.
Above you see a map that zooms in on these three newly discovered zones (I told you it was messy...). These are NOT in the current resource and it has been estimated that the George Murphy zone alone contains 260,000oz. This estimation is dated as it was made in the beginning of this year. Since then this zone saw some additional holes, plus they hit a high grade ore shoot (201g/t over 0.5m). This zone saw another ore shoot hit in 2017 with an intercept grading 241.5g/t over 4.2m (incl 807 over 1.25m). From one of their news releases: "The identification of a shoot-like geometry is typical for gold deposits elsewhere in the world in orogenic gold systems. These mineralized shoots are important to the economics of deposits, and they tend to be continuous for long distances along their plunge."
The three zones that are not in the resource are well aligned and 1km apart each, with the newly discovered Richard zone smack in the middle. Management has alluded in previous news releases, that these zones are probably connected. This week, we saw the earliest sign that this might be the case. In the middle of the 1km gap between Jubilee and Richard zone, they hit 3g/t over 12m. A not-so-splashy headline like this, on a day where Novo Resources, Nighthawk Gold Corp, Wallbridge Mining, Aurania Resources and others came out with money-magnetic-news, failed to drive new investors to this story.
The company is currently drilling with three active drills on this project, which is significantly up from the one drill they had at the start of this year. The newsflow has notably picked up, which is a good thing. There are more results pending from between the zones, which means we might be in for another update on this before year end. For 2020, the company is planning a resource update for this Clarence Stream project and at current rate of drilling, it wouldn't surprise me to see this coming in at over 2 million ounces. Today's enterprise value stands at C$31M. Note that Clarence Stream is located in New Brunswick, with plenty of mining infrastructure nearby and management and family own about 30% of the company. Galway's CEO used to be CFO at Kirkland lake. Galway's chief geologist, Michael Sutton, is ex-KL as well and made the South Complex discovery. Another heavyweight is Wesdome's Duncan Middlemiss who acts as an advisor and is a friend of the company.
It should also be noted that Galway Metals' CEO Robert Hinchcliffe has been relentlessly buying his own stock this year. With the SEDI filing of today, he surpassed 1 million shares this year alone. For this, he spent this year's salary plus half of what he'll make next year. And the year's not over yet.
If you're in it for the next Fosterville, this is not the place. I'm in it for the next Valentine Lake or Moose River. Coincidentally, both projects are situated on the same trend.
I'm long and this is not a recommendation to buy. Rather, a gentle reminder that there's more to companies then just their news headlines. I'm currently invested in Galway Metals because I believe they have a good shot at making this project work and adding significant ounces to their resource update next year. There's value to be had in growing their resource to levels that make their current valuation seem cheap, but there's still risk. I want them to connect the zones with each other or at least further expand these. All these five zones are still open in all directions. There's the Estrades project in Quebec as well, but that's for another time.
