Exactly a year ago I introduced Roscan Gold (ROS-TSXv) to my audience. It was a new junior gold play in the very prolific high grade Mali gold belt in West Africa.
But after that, the stock languished—and did I ever catch hell for that! Months of angry emails! But now the company is set to become one of the most successful African plays of the year. So I was just early!
The stock languished for a couple reasons. One was the Market couldn’t look at the drill results at the time and put together the potential for a resource estimate.
Secondly, the CEO at the time, Greg Isenor, and team were recognized more as an early stage exploration group who could sniff out great ground–not so much with capital markets.
Enter former Clarus Capital mining analyst Nana Bompeh Sangmuah–who had become a very successful & respected mining analyst in Toronto. He joined the Company late last year
He saw so much potential, he left his comfortable perch to take over the reins as President and CEO of Roscan. And to prove he knows how to make money, he came in at the bottom. He brought in some (very) Smart Money in the form of Michael Gentile.
Now, less than a year later, Sangmuah has
-raised $15 million
-brought in value-add shareholders,
-increase Roscan’s land position in the area to the point where now, -investors can see the potential for a major multi-million ounce gold deposit, at surface and…
-quite possibly over 4 g/t—very high grade considering some Nevada deposits are in production at under half a gram.
More importantly, investors now have confidence that Sangmuah, Isenor and the team can move into production.
I had a conversation with Sangmuah earlier this week:
Keith: What did you saw in the company, that made you decide to leave your analyst position and come over to Roscan?
Nana: I saw value creation in Roscan. I’ve always been very much leaning towards the very early stage situations, because that’s where you have the maximum upside once the execution goes right. Most my coverage history as an analyst, I was almost first on everything. The value proposition was too compelling and was a great team with superb track record.
Because I would take the calculated risk, and take the pain to understand the project in details. And it’s exciting, and often times you discover some jewels. And if you draw people in at that stage you can create significant returns for them. And that was all based on the track record of the founder, who had been very successful discovering these deposits, and traded them up into the laps of major producers.
Keith: And in total, you’ve raised about, pretty close to 15 million bucks in the last nine months?
Nana: Yes – myself and team, and the other thing that I would highlight as well, is there was always a misconception to a lot of people that were interested in this story, but always were scared about our warrants position. And they thought that was going to create a significant ceiling on us, and prevent us from re-rating, which hasn’t happened.
The warrant position we started out, has been cut by a third. Most of these warrants have been exercised and held by the respective large holders, and all the warrants are in the money as we speak. And by next December, when all of them are exercised, that brings another approximately 25 million bucks, almost 35 million bucks into treasury.
Keith: You did a recent acquisition. Tell me about that.
Nana: It was a very strategic acquisition because it actually expands this eight kilometer corridor that I spoke about at Mankouke, into a 30 kilometer corridor stretching further north. We are very excited and looking forward to updating the market.
Keith: Tell me about this year’s exploration campaign.
Nana: At the initial technical session in December 2019 everybody agreed to start on Mankouke, being the place to go, and start this year’s campaign. And the reason was quite obvious, because we had an approximately 80 meter mineralized section, which was picked up from the end of our 2019 drill campaign. And the average grade in that section was about four grams per ton.
Basically it was wide intercepts from that campaign, and we not only managed to extend the mineralization to a depth of 155m, we also established a strike of 600 meters for the mineralization.
We’re drilling deeper. We’re drilling to the North and West, trying to understand this better. But the northerly plunge aligns with some of the bigger deposits in the region.
However, we would be stepping up campaign on our regional targets, which included Kandiole targets, the west and north targets at Kandiole. And the goal is to just make sure that we find more discoveries, because that would be very well appreciated, and well rewarded, if there should be a transaction that should happen down the line.
Keith: Right, okay. When you look at where the geology is leading you, where do you get the most exited?
Nana: Well, the most excitement I think comes from our current drill program at Mankouke South. Also the corridor is relatively unknown, and what excites me about the corridor so far, my understanding and based on the work we’ve done, there’s a lot of cross-cutting features in this corridor, and that’s usually quite exiting in geology. We’ll be doing more geophysical studies to highlight some of the trends, because we want to make sure that if it’s there, we’re definitely finding it. And we spend our resources wisely towards that.
Keith: In a best case scenario now, when would you see a maiden resource?
Nana: The key really is not to put the cart before the horse. We can show results, yeah. But our focus is currently to unlock value from the entire property.
And once we start generating resources, it will probably not be resource from just one single zone, it would be resources from a few others as well. And that’s where you can get into the discussions how we advance to the next level as will open numerous doors.
I always get this question, and a lot of people do the comparison ask you, “The next Fekola?” If you ask me it would be great if we get the next Fekola, but whatever we’re doing, we’re drilling and we’ll find out. But, my confidence is the ability to string a lot of ounces together on a lot of multiple targets, and discovery in the property and the package, which would make it quite significant as well.
Keith: So, what do you do to keep market interest here, when at some point in time the street’s going to really want this?
Nana: We’ve got to keep showing good results and value creation.
Keith: Your stock has had quite a run here, is there any part of the company here that you think is still unappreciated?
Nana: I think basically the run is definitely based on hits that have been made from the southern Mankouke target. Without a doubt – the team comes with some the finest experience and skillset, Keith you will be surprised if you were on an exploration call – simply amazing to listen to our team – I am privileged to have this team.
The Komet acquisition is relatively unknown to the street, and we also have to show to the street the reason why we think that it’s strategic. We’ve gotten already three advanced targets there, one that already has a historical estimate. And with some little work, that should be adding some more value.
Keith: Okay, thanks so much for your time again.
Nana: Keith, thanks for the interest. As you can imagine it’s been crazy, and we’ve been pulled in several different directions at once, but we’re always a phone call away, and happy to answer any questions.
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Roscan now has the geology and management that has attracted a huge audience, chewed through all the warrants and has strong institutional support.
For those who invested a year ago it has been a longer wait than anticipated, but the stock is a double! Patient investors win again!