“BUT AURYN HAS NO NI 43-101 COMPLIANT MINERAL RESERVES/MINERAL RESOURCES AND WITHOUT ‘MR/MR’ YOU’LL NEVER GET FUNDED BY AN INSTITUTIONAL INVESTOR AND YOU’LL NEVER MAKE IT INTO PRODUCTION”
You MiningPlay forum participants have literally heard this probably 100-times by now. So, what exactly is “43-101” and what is a “Mineral Resource” according to the 43-101 Standards and Guidelines and the CIM (Canadian Institute for Mining and Metallurgy) definitions? Is it really true that you can’t get funded or into production without one? Auryn did indeed get funded without an OFFICIAL 43-101 and they are clearly transitioning into production.
NI 43-101 is the Canadian government’s answer to the Bre-ex Mining scandal. This involved a couple of bad guys in Kalimantan, Indonesia drilling holes into their drill cores and hammering in gold acquired elsewhere but on their property. Investors lost billions on the scam. What NI 43-101 does is it sets up “Standards and Guidelines” for CANADIAN MINERS in dispersing news to the public.
What exactly is a “MINERAL RESOURCE”? A “MINERAL RESOURCE” is defined as a concentration of naturally occurring solid, liquid, or gaseous material in or on the Earth’s crust that has a “reasonable prospect for economic extraction”.
With the price of gold, silver, and copper where they are today and with the grades being found at the DL2 Vein what they are, the question becomes does this project have “a reasonable prospect for economic extraction”? Of course it does. It’s not even close.
The next question becomes, if Maurizio opted to put out a press release tomorrow revealing the ounces of “Mineral Resources” that the Auryn geoscientists have calculated to date while following the Standards and Guidelines of NI-43-101, could he label it as being “NI 43-101 COMPLIANT”. No, he could not, so don’t expect one, but expect a press release soon outlining something 100-times as important-EARNINGS.
The text of 43-101 cites the need to perform a FORMAL PRE-FEASIBILITY STUDY, before being able to label Auryn’s MINERAL RESOURCE as being NI 43-101 COMPLIANT. There are a vast number of detailed technical and economic studies that also need to be performed for compliance. Does Auryn have all of that information available in hand. Absolutely. They wouldn’t have made a “POSITIVE PRODUCTION DECISION” without that information and an institutional investor would never have handed over a $4 million check without that information.
Let’s look at this from a different angle. Gold is currently trading at over $4,100 per ounce. Let’s pretend that it was trading at $850 per ounce for a moment. Meeting that “reasonable expectation for economic extraction” hurdle would be a different story. At a POG of $850 per ounce, might Auryn have had to do a diamond drill program on the veins and execute a Pre-Feasibility Study prior to Maurizio or the financial institution being willing to advance the funds they advanced? That’s quite possible if not probable. It would have probably taken about 4 years to do the diamond drilling program and do the PFS. Instead of having 70 million shares outstanding, Auryn could have easily had perhaps 700 million shares outstanding NOT TO MENTION NO PRODUCTION IN THAT 4-YEAR PERIOD.
With the approach they opted to take, did Auryn really “cut corners” by circumventing the “traditional approach”? As an investor, I am extremely confident that the mine life of the project is extensive and the number of ounces of MR/MR in the ground is significant. Am I, as an investor, willing to undergo all of that dilution of my share position in order to find out the exact number of ounces of MR/MR present and the exact length of the mine life or the exact “Internal Rate of Return” (IRR). Heck no. I already know for a fact that it is adequate, and I have already checked off on that “box”.
It’s not very often that a junior miner can put a mineral prospect into production at a time in which the prices of the gold, silver, and copper are ALL trading at or near all-time highs. So, does Auryn really have a project with a “reasonable expectation for economic extraction”? Absolutely. In fact, when the actual production figures come out soon, that information will be worth 100-times the information contained in a FORMAL NI 43-101 TECHNICAL REPORT. In the meantime, it might be wise to trust the due diligence capabilities of the institutional investor that just cut a check for $4 million while extending extremely favorable terms.
In a recent quarterly update, Auryn cited that they had in their possession “detailed cash flow analyses” for the project. They shared them with the financiers. Who knows, the analyses may have been done by the financiers.