Barman, enjoy your work. Here is a snippett published just this...

Barman, enjoy your work. Here is a snippett published just this morning by renowned mining journalist Barry Fitzgerald and it highlights how much potential Firefly Metals has. Enjoy.

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July 18, 2024
The Canadian mining market has received bad press in recent years for its lack of support for the junior explorers.
But oh boy, the market there loves a development story, particularly if it is for one of the hot commodities like copper.

That hit home during the week when Steve Parson’s FireFly (ASX:FFM) went for a bit of a trot in response to news all the way from Saskatchewan.

The news was from the Toronto-listed Foran Mining that it had pulled in $C315 million from placements (including to Agnico Eagle) and an upsized project debt facility from the Sprott group for its McIlvenna Bay copper project.

There are similarities between Foran and FireFly. Both are advancing copper projects of roughly similar size and of roughly similar exploration upside, with FireFly’s focus being its Green Bay copper-gold project in Newfoundland.

The main difference between the pair is that Foran boasts a market cap of $A1.32 billion while FireFly has a $A392m market cap (undiluted).

Yet FireFly’s development ambition is aided by some $250m in infrastructure left behind by the previous under-capitalised owner. FireFly is also close to releasing a resource upgrade for Green Bay.

Foran is more advanced on the development front though, with first production from McIlvenna Bay project forecast for the fourth quarter of next year.
FireFly in the meantime is focussing on growing the resource in support of an expanded Green Bay come back, with local followers of the stock suggesting a 40,000tpa-60,000tpa production rate is on the cards.

The coming resource upgrade – recent exploration returned high-grade mineralisation up to 460m outside of the current resource estimate of 811,000t at 2.07% copper equivalent – shapes up as the first step in closing the gap on Foran’s market cap.

The world’s biggest resources investor BlackRock likes the FireFly story. It has been a steady buyer in the past month, increasing its stake from 11.89% to 13.12% at 80c a share. FireFly traded on Thursday at 84c.