Ann: $3.5M Capital Raising to Fast-track drill testing, page-18

New Barry Fitzgerald RRS article about Trek from 2 days ago:

Gold’s climb to record levels has fired up the efforts of junior gold explorers looking to get into production as soon as possible.It means much of the exploration effort by the juniors is at brownfields deposits where remnant mineralisation from past workings and the hope of a meaningful extension is seen as the ticket to becoming a producer as soon as possible.And it is.
But the real (potentially) game-changing stuff is being undertaken by those juniors which are focused on making a Tier-1 discovery in frontier locations under cover because it’s hard to do, but the rewards can be huge.Because of the squeeze on equity funds due to the broader market malaise, there are not many juniors involved in the high risk-high reward exploration described above.
One that is pursuing the model is Trek Metals (ASX: TKM) which last traded at 6.9c for a market cap of $36 million, which is a good $10 million above its market cap of a couple of weeks ago due to the buzz surrounding its Christmas Creek project in WA’s Kimberley region.Trek is out of the Leibowitz-Biddle-Young stable. They are best known as the founding directors of Pilbara Minerals, the $4.4 billion ASX lithium market leader thanks to the discovery under the LBY crew of the world-class Pilgangoora deposit.The LBY crew have given Trek chief executive Derek Marshall his head to go out and find the next big one. A youngish geologist who delivered Newcrest/Greatland their initial resource of 3.4Moz of gold and 160,000t of copper at the Havieron discovery (now 100% Greatland) in the Paterson province of WA, Marshall is as excited about Christmas Creek as a CEO should be at this stage.
Christmas Creek was picked up from a bunch of technically-driven geologists after the world’s biggest gold producer Newmont (it now owns Newcrest) exited a farm-in deal with them on the property about six years ago.Newmont spent $6 million doing all of the early grunt work on the project that needed to be done before deciding to move, as is the wont of the mining majors every now and again as they adjust their portfolios. It means that Trek acquired an advanced project with known and widespread gold mineralisation, enabling it to move quickly on its maiden drilling program in the 2024 December quarter. The reverse circulation drilling returned two nice hits, remembering this stuff is all under 10m or so of sand cover – which means the mineralisation has been hidden away from the world and wily old prospectors since the year dot.
The drilling at the Martin prospect returned 10m grading 12.66g/t from 59m and 10m at 7.34g/t gold from 94m. Both intersections contained still higher intercepts, including a 2m intercept grading bang on 1oz of gold a tonne. Marshall said wide-spaced drilling had now confirmed gold mineralisation over a large footprint measuring about 800m by 500m, with two trends identified by multi-element analysis extending more than 1km in a north-easterly direction and 1.5km to the south-east. The high-grade RC drill results sit at the intersection of the two trends. Needless to say Marshall has been as keen as mustard to roll a drill back out to Christmas Creek to determine how extensive the high-grade stacked vein gold system is at the remote property. To that end, Trek went into a trading half on Tuesday to complete a private placement of $3.5 million at 5c a share. Such is the interest in the company’s about-to-restart exploration effort at Christmas Creek, there was reportedly a stampede for the stock. Early days but early signs are certainly encouraging, as well as being a welcome point of difference to the more common hunt nowadays for a near-term production opportunity without (potential) multi-million ounce upside.