1,700 Metres at Altar: Aldebaran Delivers a Standout Copper Hole

Trevor Hall (0:16)

All right, everybody, welcome back into Mining Stock Daily. I'm going to wrap up my corporate updates here today with one from Aldebaran Resources. They do trade on the Venture Exchange with ALDE, and on the OTCQX with ADBRF.

The company's been publishing more drill results out of this past current program. A lot of infill going on here to convert a lot of that inferred resources into higher confidence, measured and indicated. And this morning's highlight hole, hole 260, oh my gosh, did not disappoint. Over 1,700 meters, a 0.45% copper equivalent. That was the headline hole, and it would be in any other case. But John Black, CEO of the company, is joining us for his comments. John, good to see you. My goodness, 1,700 meters. That's the longest hole you guys have ever drilled.

John Black (1:08)

Yeah, we've got holes that are longer than that, but not continuously mineralized like this. So we're certainly pleased with this.

As you mentioned, many of the holes reported today are infill holes. So what we're trying to do is improve confidence in the deposit. We're trying to convert as much of the remaining inferred to measured and indicated as possible. We're pretty fortunate that our most recently reported resource is about two-thirds measured and indicated. But that inferred that's still there, we need to get that converted over. So this hole is in an area where it should be a good hole. It's just it came back better than expected in a longer run, more continuously mineralized than expected. So I think this is a good indication of the size of deposit we have and the continuity that we have within this deposit. So it's, and we're very happy to see that the market's back pretty robust now and we're getting reactions to these type of holes. We've been frustrated in our most recent release when we put out pretty similar results that didn't quite get the traction that we did today. So good to see that people recognize this for what it is, and recognizing that we're still significantly undervalued for the size and quality of asset that we have.

Trevor Hall (2:26)

John, I mean, your stock was up more than 18 percent now that the market's closed. So that's a wrap on today's trading. We'll see you follow through the rest of the week, obviously. But just given that you've now gone through a full day of trading, what was some of the feedback you've gotten? Why people stepping in now and not, as you mentioned previously, when you put in just as good of holes before?

John Black (2:50)

I think a little bit of it is we're back in the autumn in the Northern Hemisphere, and we're just seeing a lot more activity, a lot more awareness of the potential leverage for good copper projects right now.

As you and I know, Beaver Creek was kind of record attendance this year. And not only were there a lot of people there, but there were a lot of new faces, a lot of new money coming into the sector, a lot of people realizing the importance of having exposure to copper. And I think it's just kind of, kind of you keep hitting, hitting with good results on this. And then when you get into a market where people are looking for opportunities like this, this was just an opportunity to remind them of what we have. And when you take a look at the market cap of the company right now, compared to the asset we have, we're pretty clearly undervalued. So I think this is one that have been, it's been on a lot of people's radars. This was just the catalyst necessary to get people to balance on it today.

Trevor Hall (3:50)

All right. Well, that hole 260, that was obviously the headline hole, but it wasn't the only hole reported today. You did republish results from hole 266, 265, 269, 271

A lot of decent continuity in here, John. I mean, you're talking, I guess, 840 meters to over 900 meters in either one of these holes respectively, from roughly 0.5% to just a little bit over that. Anything that really stands out, you keep seeing more results from this conversion program. Anything that stands out of Altar that maybe, you guys as a management team, surprise you a little bit despite having your eyes and boots on the ground for so long?

John Black (4:36)

Not particularly. It's behaving well. It's like I mentioned, it's doing what it should do on this, and we're showing that there's three distinct kind of higher grade cores to the system, and then surrounded by large areas of lower grade material, but continuously mineralized. And so those are holding up well. They're doing what we want to. Keep in mind that these holes are also a handful of these holes that are purely geotechnical holes. They're drilling off into the very margins of the system to gather information that we can use to constrain pit slopes and things like that.