Well.... once I start down the rabbit hole, it's hard to escape. Warning... this rambles and does not come to many conclusions....
Had a chuckle at this graph from Metal X feasibility and development study back in 2015 to restart production at the Bluebird plant after acquiring a plethora of assets (seriously.... MLX was just buying up assets left right and centre). It is safe to say (and the MD last week said it), that WGX was basically unprofitable until the last 6 months... yet it's been in production for 6/7 years!
Past board and MD... well.. I think that is enough said to show my view on them.
Mind you, this was just for the Bluebird plant. Fortnum (which... originally was called Grosvenor) has been a successful mine, which is interesting since they paid less than $20m for it. Their other acquisitions are much more questionable. Their forecasts for costs were... very optimistic!
To be fair, they got the Bluebird plant and most of the surrounding assets for very little (all up for everything, perhaps $35m). This of course excludes the cost to actually get it all into production.
This development schedule (note.. this was before MLX/WGX acquired Tuckabianna from SLR) is so interesting, as.... some of the deposits have not been mined yet. The likes of Big Bell are on target, with the sub caves to run out in 2029, though that does not include the LHOS (BB deeps). Then you have 1600/Shocker... which for now, has not been touched, Day Dawn (Great Fingall & Golden crown), some operations, like Triton-Emu were mined with mixed results.
Paddy's looks to beat its original FY24 mine life by at least 1 year, though they are still drilling and hoping to extend the two secondary lodes with production set to achieve around 35k p.a.
Bluebird U/G is not even on the list, yet is WGX second largest operation with a goal of 600ktpa (basically 65-70k p.a)
I know a few of the open pits were used up, but... it gets tricky to follow them all! Though many still sit idle, because... they have been untouched for decades when POG was lower. I mean, WGX have 6.8m ounces in resources. It is no stretch to ponder what they can achieve with a real and expanded drill program in the years ahead.
I wonder why they don't look to develop the upper section of the main Prohibition lode?
Finally found a little more detail on Cuddingwarra. Large group of open pits of various sizes. No underground I could find.
Day Dawn is also untouched... Interesting to see the Remnants grading 10g/t (but in more recent presentations, the grade was about 6.55g/t), and most recently, WGX took all detail out of the presentations in regards to the remnants, but... then this week, has hinted that there may be an opportunity to access some of it, but... not included in guidance, which is fair enough as... they just won't know until they start developing the decline.
Also found a clue as to why the Geo's thought... that Great Fingall was just one zone.
Very little change in WGXs tenements in the Murchison over the last 7 years (though a few name changes like Reedy....)
Very simplistically, WGX still has 800k ounces in reserve sitting in deposits/U/G that are yet to be accessed at all. Before any further exploration.
Big Bell Deeps are not yet in the reserves, though great Fingall is. I think I posted a while back, that I view WGX as being perhaps 2-3 years behind RMS, which in it's more recent past, has drill the heck out of Mt Magnet, and had a good deal of success in both open pits and U/G extensions/discoveries.
WGX has only just started to actually focus any real drilling outside of just extension/infill drilling.
Much of WGX tenements, have seen very little if any 'modern' exploration ever. With it finally paying it's way, this will allow them to really focus on new resources as Big Bell is hopefully not going to be the only U/G operation that WGX has with a 10+ year mine life (the sub caves have 6 years, Deeps 10+ easily).
Hopefully WB and the Geo team can start sharing their exploration results in a manner that actually can show the market short/medium/long term aspirations they have.
Could go on, but.... ha, don't want HC struggling to load all the images in this thread.
(20min delay)