From Barry Fitz Rising Stars this morning:Sunstone Metals (ASX:...

From Barry Fitz Rising Stars this morning:

Sunstone Metals (ASX: STM):It is against that backdrop that junior copper stocks like Sunstone Metals (ASX: STM), Havilah Resources (ASX: HAV) and Coda Minerals (ASX: COD) are seeking to benefit.All three attended the RRS Gold Coast conference and made it clear they are looking to deal on their copper projects, which come with the sort of scale that the major miners like to see.Sunstone MD Patrick Duffy took the investors at the conference off to Ecuador where the company is plotting to become a 100,000-150,000oz equivalent gold-copper producer at the Limon epithermal project in the south of the country.Limon is seen as a stepping stone to the bigger story emerging at the group’s gold-copper porphyry discoveries near Limon, and in the north of the country at its El Palmar project which has the same mix of early open-cut/porphyry opportunities.Duffy, a former Xstrata copper man and part of the team at Red 5 that successfully developed the King of the Hills gold project in WA to make Red a $2 billion company, is a fairly recent arrival at the $30 million Sunstone.When he joined Red 5 in 2019 it was a $60 million company. “I joined Sunstone because I see the same potential,” Duffy told the conference. Part of his strategy is to “evaluate strategic options” at El Palmar.Take that to mean pursuing a strategic partner with deep pockets to accelerate work at the project, which has the sort of upside potential as the projects held by SolGold and others along the same fault zone do.To that end, Duffy put the stock into a trading halt on Thursday for a $2 million capital raise at 0.5c a share. According to the circulating term sheet, the cash is to be put to work pursuing partnership opportunities, both in the southern and northern projects, as well as helping to fund ongoing drilling.From that is can be assumed that the phone has been ringing from the big end of town looking to beef up their exposure to Ecuador’s copper-gold riches. The potential for a major to knock on Sunstone’s door with a proposal is clearly not reflected in the group’s current modest market cap