You are right here in that we won't probably see any actual cash flow from Duparquet for a while, even if they were to develop the starter pit. The important thing would be to just get an announcement that they have a solid plan in place to get that asset into production with a partner, the market would then discount that news release by all logic into the share price.
I think the additional drilling is the right thing to do here in the sense that I agree the more ounces they can show at Duparquet the more meaningful the asset becomes. And they have been able to show with the recent drill results this resource will definitely be among the largest in the region. The bigger companies are definitely not interested in smaller projects right now and even though they are making record free cash flows they are still conservative in their acquisitions. The bigger projects are the ones to get acquired first and if Duparquet really becomes a 10m+ ounce asset with the recent drilling then there is no way this has not been noticed by the industry. I don't think most investors realize how rare assets of this kind are, especially in good jurisdictions. The Greenstone hardrock project interest was recently acquired for 1.36B (CAD) so that sets some reference to what these kinds of projects will be acquired for. That deposit was a 5.5m ounce asset so keep that in mind when thinking about what Springpole and Duparquet (a potential 10m+ oz asset) will be acquired for when developed.
This is nothing but a waiting game at this point, it's boring as hell in terms of share price action but important things are happening not only in the company but the sector as well. What the eventual spark will be nobody knows. I suspect it will be a combination of things that gets the party going the most important of which will be higher highs in the gold price and increasing investor sentiment.
People often forget that when we talk about "sentiment" in general we refer to the Western world. Gold is very much in demand right now all over Asia (esp. China) and also in many developing countries. It's just that the G7 economies and their "financial capital" move the markets more than anything else, so we need to get them onboard the "gold train" once again.
I still think we are going to need a big crash in the "Mag 7" stocks and all of their ilk before the bigger capital starts to seek new avenues for investment. A sort of tech bust 2.0 is how I see this playing out which will then cause the Fed to panic and lower rates and start big QE programs once more which will lead to a massive devaluation in the USD. The USD will not become worthless by any means but it will just go down in value vs other currencies and gold in particular.
AI
