IMO the recent report was quite good ... market seemed not to like it all that much, but when you consider they had solid, albeit, lower grade uranium all the way down to 300m ... we are looking at a reasonable resource here.
What seemed to confuse the market was the term: "Bulked out zones" ... in other words they "averaged" out the mineralisation over the whole distance. You don't tend to see this reported generally & hence some might have felt the grades were lower than they should be. While BMN generally have higher grades at Anom A than EXT have at Ida Dome, the fact is, if BMN averaged some of their holes over the entire intercept a lot of their grades would read much lower. I am not knocking BMN, just putting things into context. Perhaps management could have couched the announcement more favourably!
Now don't you reckon that sounds a whole lot better??
So some positive points: By the end of February 2008 will have seven drill rigs on site ... they will be going flat out
The initial JORC will only encompass 50% of Garnet valley, so they have a lot of area to add to the JORC through the year. IMO anything around the 25m lbs will please the market. Garnet valley is the jewel in the Dome though, so expect the contribution from the other satellite deposits to be smaller
Negatives Tough terrain to work in! I have mentioned this before, Ida Dome is very hilly, and so work progress is slower than normal. From the report: "will commence drilling at the Holland's Dome Prospect within the next month following a campaign of track construction that has helped access to this area." ... tough gig this!
2] The report says: "The quantity of drilling, at the other prospects, does not yet allow a resource to be defined." YET, at the “Rossing South project ... three deeper RC holes have been drilled ... follow-up drilling will resume this month" !!!
I have mentioned this before too ... I don't like the fact that they are messing around with Rossing South. IMO they are doing this to appease shareholders & garner interest from the Canadians if they make a strike there. This tactic might work, but IMO has a bigger chance of backfiring. They should be doing what BMN is doing & focus fully on Ida Dome ... they need to get the WHOLE of Ida Dome into the JORC ASAP to be taken seriously.
The long time EXT holders have knocked me for making this comment before, but IMO this is the wrong course to take. Yes, they will be getting two more rigs, but if they were ALL put on Ida, then we can get that finished quicker & put them ALL onto Rossing South.
By the way, Xemplar are 10 times worse than this!!! I have done some reading on them, and IMO they could end up in real trouble ... They are drilling 4 or 5 different targets simultaneously!! Good grief!! IMO they are doing this purely to titillate the market & attract a takeover bid. How can they be serious explorers that way? It is going to cost them a fortune in cash, & will take them years before they can get a project to development.
Looking at the neighbour; BMN have shown the way in this. They have a number of better targets than Anom A, but besides surface exploration, they have kept ALL their rigs on Anom A ... with very fast progress the result. Time will tell which is the better approach.
So overall I remain very bullish on EXT ... I still think Rossing South & Hildenhof will be better resources than Ida Dome, but Ida Dome will nevertheless become a great startup project for EXT. It also offers good leverage into Namibia.
Now we just need the DOW to stop kaking itself so these Namibian babies can do their thing!!
cheers
(PS. I hope no one is too perturbed by me mentioning "the neighbour"!)
EXT Price at posting:
0.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)