This is the first of my ‘Deep Dive’ series of articles taking an in-depth look into individual stocks. I am currently in the process of getting my new youtube channel up and running with content which will run the same theme, helping investors find information and data on companies they may never have heard of in the past.
Recently listed on London’s main market First Class Metals are a mining exploration company with land packages within the Schreiber-Hemlo greenstone belt in Ontario, Canada. The stock with the ticker FCM has a 176km block of licences known as North Hemlo, Esa, Sugar Cube, Mckellar, Magical, Enable, Pickle Lake and Coco East, the aim is to develop significant viable exploration opportunities across the licence package.
Canada is a world leading, safe mining jurisdiction with over 60 minerals mined from almost 200 mines across the vast country which produced over $43 billion in revenue in 2020 which was a decrease of just over 8% from 2019’s revenue of $47 billion.
Exploration potential
North Hemlo is the flagship project of the Ontario based companies portfolio with a 423 single cell mining claims over 90km, which accounts for around half the entire land mass of FCM holdings. The company is in the process of analysing all data available whilst reprocessing and interpretation of airbourne magnetic data. Preparations are being made to apply for a exploration permit application which would allow the company to start trenching ahead of a hotly anticipated drill programme.
Esa sits just 10km away from Barrick Gold’s mammoth 23 million ounce Hemlo gold mine. Very little historical work has been done of this area but location wise it is a prime exploration target with surface mapping and sampling the next step forward, along with ground magnetics to further define structures and seek out potential drill targets.
Sugar Cube is a 43km claim which is located nearby to the 1 million ounce Harte gold mine. No historical drilling has been done on this land holding but nearby drilling of other licences have seen results of 4.4 oz gold per tonne and 0.22% nickel whilst zinc and silver have also been intercepted in other area’s nearby. Future plans for Sugar Cube include rock sampling and a high resolution drone survey over the mineralised trend.
Mckellar is a very interesting exploration target with a multitude of metals located nearby including base metals such as molybdenum which was recorded historically on this licence 6419 parts per million alongside zinc intercepts of 4400 parts per million.
Magical is very under explored and sits at a landmass of 3km, this licence is nearby the valley float gold block which has returned a drill hole recording 16.2 g/t gold.
Enable is another fairly unexplored licence full of potential with Panther Metals as neighbours.
Pickle Lake is the project i am personally most excited about due to the joint venture agreement with Palladium one, the licence is surrounded by licences which have had positive returns when the drill has been sunk in the ground. Palladium one own the land connected to Pickle Lake in the form of the Tyko property which has returned impressive nickel and copper mineralisation with hole TK-16–011: 6m =1.47% Ni, 0.49 Cu% being a stand out. Whilst the nearby RJ & Tyko drill results stand up very well at above 1%+ Ni eq the Smoke Lake discovery (on the Tyko block) a few Km’s further to the east is one of Canada’s highest ever grade Nickel finds at nigh on 10%Ni Eq. Pickle Lake or ‘West Pickle Lake’ is currently being drilled, this area is contiguous to North Hemlo. FCM are hoping the recently flown 4000km line low level VTEM will vector them into other targets of a similar nature going South West from Tyko.
North Hemlo including Pickle Lake, RJ Zone, Tyko and Smoke Lake data
Coco East is considered prospective for both mesothermal lode gold and VMS deposits, located just 8km east of the Superior Lake Zinc project which is a high grade zinc deposit which has a impressive JORC resource of 2.35 Mt @ 17.7% Zn, 0.9% Cu whilst also holding gold and silver with a probable reserve of a further 1.96 Mt at a slightly lower grade across all above mentioned metals.
Summary
I predict a really promising future for First Class Metals as they drive forward as a extremely active exploration company. They are welcomed onto London’s main market as a gate way for investors into the Canadian mining scene which not many other London listed stocks can offer. FCM have had a very active program completed already this summer across six of the seven properties, large VTEM program flown, reprocessing existing VTEM and all existing data along with the drilling at West pickle Lake. One of the focal points that peaked my interest in FCM is the detail in the joint venture with Palladium one, which states the buy in process means they cover exploration costs in year one they have to spend circa C$25’000, year two they spend C$135’000 which earns them 51% then in year three a spend of C$165’000 and preparing a NI43–101 technical report which is the standard developed by the Canadian securities administrators for mineral projects, which will earn Palladium one a final total of 80% stake in the project. This means Pickle Lake could potentially have around C$225’000 minimum spent on exploration in the next 3 years alone, which could unearth a deposit early in the First Class Metals journey, whilst other exploration programmes on separate licences run in tandem.
The opinions expressed here are those of the author
Disclaimer: This blog is provided for general information and It does not constitute investment advice, not buy or sell shares, warrants or bonds in any companies written about within the blog. Information is taken from publicly available sources and any comment is that of the author.
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