BCM Resources (B.V)
Investing in pre-discovery plays, or, “Why I learned to stop worrying and love the risk.”
tl;dr:
BCM Resources (B.V) is a “penthouse or outhouse” copper porphyry pre-discovery explorer in mining-friendly Utah. Their world-renowned president and CEO Sergei Diakov handpicked this project to work on and we are potentially just weeks away from transformative results.
I am generally pretty cautious with pre-discovery explorers. In my eyes, there are just too many reasons to avoid them, despite the eye-watering returns they can offer:
I don’t like value creation and destruction boiling down to a single binary result.
They can be a challenge for non-geos to understand.
They are more prone to blue-sky pump jobs, shady in nature or not.
Their (microscopic) size and risk profile makes them ultra-susceptible to events beyond the company’s control. Living and dying on the whims of Mr. Market means bad luck or bad timing can devastate these companies – and their investors.
I try to be a data-driven in my analysis as an investor, which means too often I just can’t work with pre-discovery plays and their unwritten stories.
All this means that, especially in today’s depressed market, there are just too many post-discovery projects with reduced risk and data-driven potential for further rerating for me to focus heavily on pre-discovery explorers.
But let’s be honest. If you are in this sector, you aren’t looking for 10% or even 50% returns. You are here for the allure of 10 baggers, 20 baggers, or more. And that’s why we can’t always resist pre-discovery plays, can we? So, when I do cross over to the dark side and start looking at pre-discovery plays, there are two things I can do to most meaningfully increase my chances at success:
1. Be a geologist.
2. Bet on the jockey.
Since I am not presently a geologist, that really leaves placing your faith and investment in the correct team. Rick Rule has said that one thing he would do differently as an investor if he could start over is to not try too hard finding different teams to invest in – he realised after 40 years in the business that the majority of his money was made betting on the same small group of people. The point being that there is an undeniable trend of an outsized amount of discoveries being made by the same small group of people.
With all this as context, I introduce to you BCM Resources, who I believe has exactly the sort of leadership you need to be looking for to tilt the odds in your favour in this end of the sector.
Sergei Diakov is the president and CEO and is a major part of the story. His resume is legitimately one of a world-leading copper expert. He served for years as an exploration manager for BHP and was the lead geo of the team that finally made the discovery of Oyu Tolgoi and has made numerous other significant porphyry discoveries. It was during his time in his role as Group Discovery Advisor for AngloGold Ashanti that BCM’s Thompson Knoll project came across his desk. Anglo passed on it, but Diakov remembered it and sought the project out shortly after his retirement. All this to say, I return to my #2 rule about pre-discovery plays: Bet on the jockey. And, for my take, Diakov’s interest in Thompson Knolls certainly has me interested in turn. Point BCM.
Geologically, BCM needs that expertise. These are deep, concealed targets, with 100s of meters of burden obscuring them. The nature of this means that to be economically successful, Thompson Knolls almost certainly has to be world-class in size. With BCM, you are elephant hunting. Which I think is a must if you’re going to dip your toes into the risky nature of pre-discovery plays. Point BCM.
When Sergei joined BCM, he essentially pushed reset on the company’s exploration thesis, abandoning the shallower hits from the previous efforts and turning attention much further down dip.
And it looks like Diakov’s renewed exploration thesis might be on the verge of being powerfully confirmed. A few weeks ago, BCM released their latest drill results (TK8, TK9, TK10) and hole TK8 was particularly enticing - 510 feet of 0.66% copper and some sub-cut-off gold. Today’s unforgiving market was unimpressed, but I certainly took notice. I want to caution that this is speculative interpretation on my part without the data to back it up (because it doesn’t yet exist), but my understanding is that those lengths and those grades are certainly economic for block cave mining. With grade and length not an issue, the remaining variable the market is clearly waiting on is size – are there enough tons of that grade present to justify a mine plan? To expand a bit, the core remaining risk, actually, is two-fold: figuring out 1. just how big this system is and 2. how rich it can get. The former will take dozens of holes to begin to properly understand, and it is the excitement and potential of the latter that will fund those holes.
In terms of chasing grade, consider also that following that result, BCM changed their next proposed drill locations and are presently drilling out a new location based on their previous results (hole TK14). Their goal, no doubt, is to lance a clean shot through the high-grade portion of this porphyry. We don’t know for sure yet, but Diakov and his team certainly appear to be closing in on their jewel. Mid-drill, we are just weeks away from some eagerly anticipated assays.
Finances might at some point be an issue. They’ve ~$2+M cad in the bank. So another 5 or so holes before they’re empty. With any luck, it will be on the heels of a headline-grabbing assay. Note that this past spring they managed to raise a couple million at 25 cents when the sp was trading at 13 cents, so a pretty interestingly hefty premium. Which, again, speaks to this project’s potential. Low liquidity or not, name me another junior that raised money at nearly a 100% premium in the last 24 months. Go ahead and look. I will wait. Big money wanted in at size and were willing to pay for it. Point BCM.
So there you have it, my primer on BCM Resources. For all the reasons above, I like them a lot. If you are long copper and you like the spice of a pre-discovery play, I can think of few projects that deserve your attention more.
Curious if anyone has other high risk/reward copper explorers they like.
Very nice writeup, one note Sergei was retiring from Anglo American when he joined the board of "B"