Paul Johnson – Chief Executive Officer of Power Metal answers shareholders questions. Please feel free to send any requests, enquires using the following email address [email protected]
What is the strategic objective of POW?
I think shareholders are looking for an exciting story that they can engage with and can deliver a substantial capital return to justify their investment. That’s our focus.
Underlying that focus our primary strategic objective is to make large scale mineral discoveries that can see a considerable revaluation of the Company on the market.
Words are one thing, but you have to put your money where your mouth is. That’s why to date I have invested around £130,000 of personal cash in POW shares.
Overall, the Board hold 10.6% of POW, and over 15% considering connected parties. The board also have director options with an exercise price of 1.0p but these don’t activate until our share price trades over 1.5p for 5 days. So, from where we are today (0.40p) we have to see the POW share price increase by 3.75x before our options become activated.
What has been the operational strategy in the last 18 months?
POW was originally refinanced and restructured in February 2019, when it was called African Battery Metals plc. We changed the Company name in mid 2019 and POW became the new ticker.
The first step was to assess the existing project interests and push forward those projects that had the best potential versus cost to deliver upside. We achieved some success in our Cameroon cobalt-nickel project but our notable success was in the DRC where we identifying a 6.8km copper anomaly that is under further investigation.
Alongside existing interests we wanted to identify new opportunities to bolster our offer to the market. Exploration is a risky business and a degree of diversification in the portfolio always helps when looking for that first discovery.
Over the last 18 months we have been focused on that portfolio building programme and POW now has a portfolio of five interests each in our view capable of delivering the large scale discovery targeted. We also have two further interests under due diligence that may add to that key project portfolio.
We have benefitted from the difficult junior resource sector market conditions which have opened up far more reasonably priced opportunities than would have been available in a more normalised market environment.
Is it going to be a long wait for a discovery, as your interests seem early stage?
If the question is – when is the share price going to rise – of course I don’t know, but in my experience it happens along the way, not just at discovery stage, subject to market conditions of course.
And as for – will it be a long wait – it’s impossible to say if that discovery will come. I believe it will, but I have to display that belief as CEO, because if I don’t believe, how can I expect anyone to invest in POW.
The long wait for a discovery often comes when projects are very early stage. For POW what perhaps I need to shout about is the more advanced stage of many of our interests, which are actually on the cusp of potential discoveries, which can only really come with drilling of key targets.
In Botswana the Molopo Farms Complex project is drill ready. In Tanzania the Haneti Project is drill ready. And in the DRC, if we have a successful outcome to the pitting programme we will be moving toward the drilling stage. Finally, if you look at the new Australian gold JV in Victoria, subject to licence grants and local approvals there are some advanced exploration targets evident from historical public information.
This places us in a very exciting position albeit it’s important to note that exploration carries risk and the outcomes are always uncertain. However, if you don’t try you won’t know and so now really is the time to push on aggressively with our projects and go hunting for that large-scale discovery.
Company website www.powermetalresources.com
Twitter @PowerMetRes
Notes to Editors:
Power Metal Resources plc (LON:POW) is an AIM-listed metals exploration and development company exploring for the key metals used in power generation, transmission, storage and utilisation. The Board and team of advisors, who have proven expertise in exploration, mining and project generation, have identified an opportunity to utilise the Company’s position to become a leader in the London market for investors to gain exposure to the power metal commodity suite, particularly cobalt, lithium, copper and nickel.
