For the annals here’s a full lift of the SPR-relevant part of...

For the annals here’s a full lift of the SPR-relevant part of Barry’s story …. ( and I just looked it up and think a Windsor tie is *knot* a symbol of the royal family and Windsor castle).

Spartan takeover talk: major shareholder said to eye $1-plus for runaway gold explorer
Plus, still plenty of reasons to follow Wildcat, Patriot and Raiden in the lithium space. Ditto for Sunstone’s fast-emerging gold-silver find.

Barry FitzGerald

Spartan MD Simon Lawson was a late starter at the Melbourne Mining Club’s “Cutting Edge” series on Tuesday night at the Town Hall.

It was through no fault of his own.
His Qantas flight took a detour to Kalgoorlie for reasons only Qantas knows.
But in true Spartan-style, Lawson marched on through Melbourne’s usual evening traffic snarl to eventually get to tell the Spartan story.

After apologising for looking like a homeless guy – he likes to present with a Windsor tie –  Lawson was then stopped in his tracks while a tech issue with his audio-visuals were sorted out.

But again he marched on to tell the story about how a company that was worth $70 million in February last year at 10c a share is now worth close to $800m (ASX:SPR, 72c a share), making it a candidate for ASX300 index inclusion which prompts buying from index-hugging funds.

Spartan’s rapid growth in market value is down to the high-grade Never Never discovery at its Dalgaranga gold project near Mt Magnet in Western Australia. The near 1 million ounce and rising discovery sits all of 600m from a 2.5mtpa treatment plant.
The treatment plant was placed on care & maintenance in November 2022 because life was too hard processing less than 1g/t dirt from the Gilbey’s open-cut, with the earlier 2022 Never Never discovery obviously going to take time to become Dalgaranga’s high-grade backbone.
Never Never has a 1.6Moz-1.9Moz exploration target on it, and the recent discovery of the adjacent Peppers high-grade deposit, and others extending below the Gilbey’s pit, mean when Dalgaranga does come back, it will be a high-grade producer.

Lawson is a bit coy on just when the return will happen.
But it is near-term in the scheme of things, with Lawson adamant that the new underground mining and processing operation will be bullet proof before the button is pushed.

A mineral resource update and prefeasibility study on a Dalgaranga restart are planned in the second half of the year (the MRE will include a maiden estimate for Pepper), while momentum in the march to a resumption in production is being maintained with the company’s $110m cash kitty.

That includes the recent $80m equity raise at 58c. There was $300m in demand, which says something about expectations around a bullet-proof Dalgaranga and investor appetite for high-grade gold stories when the gold price is in record territory.

The question on many lips is will Spartan remain independent given deposits like Never and Never, and likely Pepper, don’t come along all that often.
It has been in M & A sights before (Westgold), and regional players include the acquisitive Silver Lake and Ramelius.
They all had a chance to move earlier at lower levels. But then again, if Dalgaranga continues to shape up as a long-lived gold producer of high-grade gold, it is anybody’s guess.

What is known is that any M & A action would have to start at $1-plus.
We know that because of a phone chat Lawson had earlier in the week with John Hodder from private equity resources fund Tembo Capital, a long-term backer of Spartan.

Hodder stepped down from the Spartan board recently, prompting talk that maybe Tembo’s time on the Spartan register with a holding of about 15% was also up, as PE firms are want to do when they’ve made a killing.

But Lawson relayed that Hodder told him that he is not interested in selling for less than $1 a share.
As it is, Spartan shares have been holding up nicely this week thanks to the news of  the extensional high-grade hits at depth at  Pepper (including 14.73m at 11.42g/t from 553.73m, including 4.37m at 36.8g/t.)

Adding to the story is nice if you can, particularly if the backdrop is the gold price taking a breather from its recent record levels.


And nice it is to be part of this company

cheers