Thesis Gold's 2023 Drill Campaign Review, Pt.2: The Ranch Project - "Just Scratching the Surface"
CEO Ewan Webster discusses the drill campaign conducted in 2023 at their Ranch Project. With the share price steadily rising, Thesis looks to be a smart, leveraged pick as the gold bulls begin to wake
tl;dr:
Ewan breaks down Thesis Gold’s work at its Ranch Project and walks us through what they’ve accomplished at their 4 or 5 main targets, including the emerging hunt for the underlying porphyry system. He ends by providing a brief update on what investors can expect from Thesis in 2024.
Index
1. The Interview
2. The Article
3. The Summary
1. The Interview
2. The Article
Thesis Gold is slowly stitching its two projects - Lawyers and Ranch - together, as the merger between Benchmark and Thesis slowly disappears in the rearview mirror. I conducted a 2023 campaign review with Ewan back in January for their Lawyers project as they rebuild the current mine plan to improve its economics.
An updated, universal, MRE is due in just a few weeks and in Q3 an updated PEA will finish marrying these two projects together.
For today, though, I have an interview with Ewan where he breaks down Thesis Gold’s work on its Ranch Project in 2023 and what its 18,000 meter drill campaign accomplished. In short, 2023 demonstrated the huge potential Ranch has on a variety of fronts:
Thesis has a strong understanding of the structural controls of Ranch - fresh discoveries from the past 2 campaigns demonstrate that.
It also opens the door for further discoveries as the fault systems on the land package have many, many more targets matching known areas of mineralisation.
Excitingly, Thesis produced drill results from this campaign that suggests they might be getting closer to discovering the porphyry system they believe lurks beneath the current epithermal system.
The high grade results that are the hallmark of this project (see the results below) are slowly coalescing together, connected by low grade, disseminated, mineralisation.
There are meaningful results both at shallow, near-surface targets as well as deeper down in the system.
If the bulls are indeed returning to the resource sector as gold continues to slowly grind through more and more all-time highs, I believe Thesis is a clear winner in such a setting as it has a unique combination of characteristics:
A strong, preexisting resource and mine plan (courtesy of Lawyers)
Huge demonstrated potential for growth through the drill bit at Ranch
Attention-grabbing headline grades
Blue sky exploration potential that could rerate the whole project (the porphyry)
Important catalysts scattered throughout the 2024 calendar (MRE, PEA, drill results)
Clearly a tier 1-quality project in terms of scale, potential, and grade
Tier 1 jurisdiction
It is responding very nicely to gold all-time highs - the exact sort of leveraged response you want to see in such a situation (it has more than doubled off its 52 week low in the end of February as gold marches upward).
It isn’t suffering from being overly hyped as some tickers are - the results are honest and well-earned.
A strong M&A candidate.
I will leave it at that for now - I strongly recommend taking a look through the summary if you don’t have time for the interview, as Ewan does a great job articulating what Thesis has accomplished and what’s yet to come. This is a strong company with a strong project and a strong management team. Even with the recent double, I believe it isn’t yet approaching fair valuation for what is clearly a top-notch project. To that end, my next update on Thesis will be a valuation analysis comparing Thesis to its peers in BC.
Until then, thanks for reading.
-Matthew from JRI
3. The Summary
01:50 General Ranch Introduction
100% Owned
2% NSR
Lot of work, some small-scale mining from the 1960s-1980s.
Historical exploration didn’t understand the structural setting.
Sat mostly dormant from 1992-2020 when Thesis acquired it
Thesis has put 70,000 meters into it.
Their modern exploration has uncovered several new zones (JK, Steve)
Ewan feels like they’re just getting started – 20+ targets that all share characteristics of current known areas of mineralisation
In 2023 they drilled 18,000 meters
This is a very large, structurally controlled epithermal field – they have to be created by an underlying porphyry driving the whole thing.
07:30 Thesis Structural Corridor
The core of the future MRE
Most of exploration has occurred on NW oriented faults on the transition between magnetic highs and lows.
Only really drilled the eastern side of the valley so far – immense amounts of opportunity for further exploration
Slowly all these targets and zones are coalescing into one large zone
Focus in 2023 was expanding shallow mineralisation at the Bingo zone that will help drive the economics of the project.
Thesis II and III had that work done very successfully last year.
Successfully expanded Bingo with some high grade hits.
14:00 Bingo Zone
Northern extent of thesis corridor
This year they tested the eastern extent and had fantastic results
Including a new one – strong copper hits in the most easterly hole.
Importantly, the mineralisation was slightly different – transitioning from Bornite and Chalcopyrite to enargite and covellite – which are types of mineralisation typically associated with the deeper sections of high-sulphidation systems exposed to hotter magmatic fluids.
Get the sense they are getting closer to the porphyry driving this mineralisation (though don’t know if it is 500m down or 1000m down.
Bingo is a second, separate, story evolving.
Thesis has pockets of very healthy, high grade ore connected by large runs of low-grade, disseminated mineralisation.
Bingo will be inferred
25 meter centers for indicated
50 meters for inferred
20:00 JK Zone
Another example of utilising mag lows to target new discoveries.
Continued exploring to the north this year
There’s very little outcrop so they have to rely on geophys and Geochem
Tey missed on their last hole, but it looks as though they will be able to follow the jog in the fault and get back into mineralisation.
Zone now has 10-15 holes
Alost mentioned Steve Zone (3.5 km south of Thesis Corridor) – not in resource but has potential for 100,000s of ounce.
This whole area continues to evolve positively.
All the big faults remain potential future targets
Believes there are analogues to this deposit type common in South America and SE Asia
A lot of the structures carrying mineralization and really a significant footprint to them.
Means they can repeat their exploration on reasonable targets.
28:00 Bonanza-Ridge
Blue sky potential is Ranch, not Lawyers. Layers has more UG ounces but they aren’t a focus.
B-R was an infill program this year
Came back with more strong mineralisation right at surface.
B-R is also wide open at depth.
Oher new zones – Ring Zone, Medusa Zone – are undrilled
Ridge appears to be an offset component of the Bonanza zone.
30:20 2024 Plans
MRE Coming in Early Q2
Lots of Met work to (further, fully) confirm they can combine Lawyers and Ranch
Look for Met work results in May
Adding a flotation circuit to Lawyers to up Silver recovery
Q3 – New PEA
Ranch and Lawyers are a lot more advanced than people give them credit for.
Almost all the ounces are already M+I meaning they won’t have to spend money drilling to upgrade them for PFS. Limits dilution
All the Baseline work on Lawyers will be done this year – huge capital-intensive endeavour
Advanced beyond PEA level in many ways.
Geotech and engineering work on Lawyers done to FS level.
Means they can focus on chasing blue sky potential at Ranch
Also other catalysts he can’t talk about yet
If Equities continue to rise, that will impact the size of their drill campaign in a positive way.
Plans for 2024 exploration are still not set in stone
Again - thanks for reading. Till next time.