Ann: Tombola Gold Presentation Broker Briefing Webinar 10-03-2022, page-13

Junior’s hold the best ground!

Large exploration players, including multinationals are struggling to find ‘Tier1’ resource assets. There’s plenty of Tier 2 and 3 resources out there to develop but the danger of spending large upfront capital only to then be potentially outranked by a Junior Exploration company years later is a real possibility.

Multinationals can’t afford too many Juniors making raw material discoveries. Especially, company-making IOCG like that found at Nil Desperandum and Lady Fanny. That’s because discoveries in known mineralised jurisdiction that has largely been ignored, now have Juniors all over them – including our regional neighbours CPM, CNB, HMX. This is certainly not how they hope to win back control.

Nevertheless, it was the multinationals who made the decision to abandoned their high-risk exploration programs and activities about ten to fifteen years ago. In an effort to rebalance their spreadsheets and deliver greater returns to their SHs. Consequently, a multitude of Junior exploration startups and IPOs secured ‘high-quality’ tenure packages in key jurisdictions. Do they now rue those decisions? And if so, are they entitled to have their cake and eat it too?

Furthermore, exacerbating their problem is the ‘rapidly’ advancing paradigm energy shift on a global scale not just for raw material but to sovereign-trusted countries like Australia. In an effort to curtail geopolitical tensions and stabilise supply chain, discoveries need to happen sooner rather than later as exploration to coming online will take many years. Therefore, highlighting the multinationals lack of Tier1 exploration exposure and why institutional investors are happy to plunge capital into Juniors is only part of their issues:

Broker Briefing Investor Webinar – what excited our MD, Byron Miles about the recent Capital Raise (about 50 seconds in)
Peloton Capital Report – Catalysis for re-rating

Let’s be clear, the resource / manufacturing renaissance is in process (4th Industrial revolution) and Junior exploration companies are on the make. At some point, it will be at the expense of the majors. Why? Because the huge advances in geophysics, including the collaborative national surveying of AusLAMP (MT) and geochemical technologies, will make sure that targets are finely tuned. Combine that with worldwide government initiatives (Aus Gov Critical Minerals Road Map) that support the development of critical minerals in sovereign-trust and high Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) countries and you have the ingredients for a new mining landscape to appear.

TBA's long term self-funding exploration objectives hasn’t changed. In particular, its Tier1 resource potential. Their quality assets is now backed up with an investment environment appetite hungry for success entwined with geopolitical stability. New company’s will be made during this buoyant period. Disruptive as it maybe for some, however, the key objective to today's Tier1 exploration process is to unlock the best potential targets for the ‘greater good’.

All IMO, DYOR, GLTA(patient)H

NOTE: As opposed to the RC drilling which provides bulk samples, TBA’s Diamond Core drilling showed precise sampling and analysis of the mineralised layers. In other words, TBA now know the direction of the geology to best target the IOCG next. Hence, they could be more advanced than some may lead you to believe.