De Grey chief outs himself as Kairos shareholder as he bangs drum for his junior neighbour

31st Jul, 2020

Plus, its Fosterville frustration as tensions mount over Victoria’s tardy bureaucracy, Hugh Morgan’s gold float starts rattling the can and Chalice’s gold cup runneth over.

There is nothing like a game-changing discovery to fire-up interest in a region’s potential to host another one.

That’s what has happened in the Pilbara, where investor interest in its gold potential has long suffered in comparison with the Yilgarn down south.

But De Grey changed all that late last year with its intrusion-related Hemi discovery about 80km south of Port Hedland.

Hemi is part of De Grey’s broader Mallina project. Mallina was already good for a 2.2 million-ounce shear-hosted resource which in the absence of Hemi, would have been coming into its own thanks to record gold prices.

But it has been Hemi, and the discussion around there now being a 5Moz potential for De Grey in the Pilbara, that recently carried the explorer to a $1 billion market cap, or $880m this week.

Such massive success naturally enough has fuelled interest by investors in who might be next in the Pilbara.

Kairos – which was a 1c stock when it was mentioned here in October – is one of the Pilbara players to benefit. It is now a 4c stock, giving it a market cap of $58m.

Like De Grey, Kairos has a long-standing known resource in the Pilbara that was recently upgraded to 873,000oz.

And after a recent fundraising exercise, it is funded for what will be its biggest field season in years, with intrusive-related gold targeting part of the story.

It was no surprise then to hear back from a Perth operative that De Grey’s executive chairman Simon Lill rocked up to the Kairos shareholder meeting during the week.

During what were some friendly exchanges with Kairos executive chairman Terry Topping, Lill confirmed that he himself was a Kairos shareholder.

He made a good point too that De Grey's existing 2.2Moz shear-hosted resource had been re-rated following the Hemi discovery as the market could now see a clear pathway to the ounces being developed.

He suggested the same thing might happen with Kairos' existing resource base, assuming of course that it comes up with something special in its exploration hunt.

Topping confirmed that drilling would start in the next couple of weeks to extend the known resource. That will be interesting in itself given record gold prices aren’t going away in a hurry.

The rig then moves to a test an 8km-long gold anomaly at Fuego, which could be anything. In the meantime, survey data is being crunched to identify Hemi-style intrusions to test. De Grey’s success means it will all be closely watched.

https://www.livewiremarkets.com/wires/de-grey-chief-outs-himself-as-kairos-shareholder-as-he-bangs-drum-for-his-junior-neighbour