Ann: Star of Mangaroon Camp Scale Gold Prospect Expands, page-20

Hi @Countrywriter thanks for the additional info. Yep that’s fair enough, I know that you are not speaking on behalf of the company so no stress there. Its just something that is somewhat of a bugbear for me with DRE re what I perceive as selectivity in the presented data relative to the crux of the announcement message. It could be as simple as they don’t consider it beneficial or potentially complicating the message by including too much data, but nothing stopping them adding in as a supplementary table.
Yeah, no question the Te is certainly encouraging. But imo its actually relatively uncommon to find a gold system that isn’t enriched to some extent in Te, at least relative to say average crustal abundance. This is primarily because Te being chalcophile it is mobilised under similar redox conditions to Au-Ag-As etc and partitions strongly into sulfide phases, with deportment into a staggering variety of primary and secondary tellurium-bearing minerals (tellurides, tellurates, tellurites) and/or directly substituting as elemental Te into pyrite / other sulfide crystal lattice itself. So its certainly a good sign (along with the other associated elements) that the fluids involved at least had the capacity to transport gold....how much, where from, and where it is now.. unknowns.

“Look at EVN; punished for very little when they are a diversified producer, reliable, Cu and Au at high levels and profitable - smacked down hard on 'outlook' news. Nothing to do with lack of discovery.”
Clearly a very different scenario to DRE…as you say. For EVN I agree (in part) that organic growth via the drill bit has been less relevant (however not entirely irrelevant)…EVN’s growth since 2015 has been underpinned by asset acquisition…and bolstered by successfully growing the contained ounces of these assets through near-mine drilling. Personally, with EVN I think they are being punished for several reasons including stagnating free cash flow, an ever-growing debt profile and a shaky production performance. Sure, a couple of their assets are genuine low-cost producers…but the paper listed AISC’s are being manipulated using the Cu by-product credits. Red Lake has been nothing but trouble since they acquired it, it has been a consistent underperformer. So to me its far from a case of being punished for very little. I think ultimately it is a question of just how ‘profitable’ they are that’s the issue, it’s great to be an un-hedged gold producer exposed to these high gold prices…but it needs to be considered relative to the substantial increases in electricity, fuel, labour etc.

But, generally speaking i think i understand what you are saying with 'linking the falling share price with the lack of discovery' and that in your view a correlation between the two is virtually non-existent at present.
I guess in the case of DRE specifically i would disagree. I have no problems accepting that market conditions and/or commodity prices are playing a big part in suppressing the sp currently...but ultimately a material discovery would transcend that...so lack thereof does play a role in my opinion. That is not to say that i think DRE are doing something wrong or that they can just point a drill rig and make a discovery appear but simply that overall the lack of discovery is in some part responsible for the decline in sp (just imo).

To me its the combined effect of a lower than ideal cash balance, a crappy market, a somewhat stranded REE-ironstone asset, and a target portfolio where unfortunately the work from the last year or so has tested (at least partially) much of the low-hanging fruit and is yet to come up trumps. Don't get me wrong, what the ground holds is what it is. Personally i like DRE's general approach... its just the quick win seems less and less likely...which i also believe has played into the valuation. So for DRE to go back to broad target generation style exploration is fine, it makes sense and it could throw up something from left-field, but it does add a new timeline and change of expectations into the mix, which again gets built into the sp.