The Mining Exploration Boom Has Barely Begun | Major Drilling

Trevor Hall (0:05)

Good morning, everybody. Happy Friday. Welcome into Mining Stock Daily, and our long-form episode here to wrap up your week this week, get you into the weekend. We got a pretty interesting episode. Actually, we're not going to talk specifically with an explorer or a financier. We're going to go straight to the drill rig with Major Drilling, and my friend Ryan Hanley of the company. Not necessarily talking about the corporate makeup of Major Drilling, but really what they're seeing with their position within this market right now in exploration and mining. There's a lot of really great insights here that Ryan explains that they're seeing from the drill rig, and then their work on the global scale on the producer side, the major producer side, and then also the exploration side. So a lot of great insights here. Special thank you to Integra Resources, Visa Silver, Revival Gold, and Equinox Gold for their continued support of Mining Stock Daily. Also a big thank you to Terrahutton. They help make the Invisible investible. If you have not gone and checked out the platform that they are evolving with and creating there, please go visit them at terrahutton.io.

It's very cool what they're doing. As I mentioned a couple of weeks ago, I got a little glimpse into it and it is very awesome. I'm just incredibly engaging. Anybody can make sense of it. So go visit our friends, Terrahutton as well. Okay. A unique conversation with Ryan Hanley from Major Drilling. I hope you enjoy it. I will be reporting from LME Week in London next week. Ton of long-form episodes in a schedule for that week as well, so more to come there. All right, everybody. Here's my friend Ryan. Welcome to what's going to be a very unique, probably first of its kind conversation here on not only Mining Stock Daily, but specifically on the long-form here, episodes that we publish at the end of each week on the channel.

Most of the time, we're covering expiration results, right?

What's this latest company? What they've been drilling? What's the grade like? Is it economic? Where are they at in their development plans? But never, ever, ever have we actually spoken to a company that actually supplies not only the drills, but the drillers. And we're going to do exactly that today with my friend, Mr. Ryan Hanley, from one of the biggest and best drilling companies out there in the world, I might say, for my editorialized major drilling. Ryan, good morning. Welcome to Mining Stock Daily.

Ryan Hanley (2:36)

Good morning. Thanks for having me.

Trevor Hall (2:38)

Yeah. Listen, this is a unique beast for me.

So I tried to do as much preparation as I could for this discussion, knowing it was going to be a little bit of a, a curve ball for our listeners. But I do think there's going to be a lot of value in the conversation to get the perspective of a drilling company, the drilling platform, and really this unique position that a company like Major and your peers kind of find itself in, in the exploration mining sector. So before we dig in, you have an extensive history in capital markets. Maybe walk us through, you are a big shot in Toronto. People know who you are.

Ryan Hanley (3:20)

I don't know about that. Toronto is a big city.

But no, to your point, I've been around for a little bit, probably going on, what, 16-ish years now. I started at the best time ever, right around the financial crisis. So, kind of started at the old, started at the bottom.

And yeah, so started mostly brief stint in banking, but more so equity research.

Worked at a firm here in Toronto called Research Capital. Was there up until 2017, covering everything from kind of working as a two-person mining team with a former colleague of mine. We covered everything from the big guys, Barricks and Newmonts back when Goldcorp was around, Icnico, all the way down the food chain to the early stage Explorer Co.s. And then from there, went over to help build up the mining platform at Laurentian Bank. It was a Montreal-based bank. Now, I think it's been acquired now or about to be acquired. But worked over there, kind of did the same thing. Covered everything from, I'd say, more mid-tiers all the way down the food chain. And then as part of the sale, Laurentian got out of Capital Markets, and then I found myself trying to figure out what to do next. And I think that Major Drilling was, it was a company that I covered. I should have mentioned I covered all the drillers as well. So just about all the publicly traded drilling companies I had under coverage. So I covered Major for about 12 years as an analyst. And it was my top pick for the last couple of years at Laurentian. I've known the crew for a long time. Great group of guys, great company, great way to play the mining sector. And it was just a really good fit. Just to go help them get out there and tell the story more. It is publicly traded. Ticker Symbol is MDI, Mike David India on the TSX. But there's not a whole lot of publicly traded drillers or service companies. So I think it was a little under the radar. And so there's an opportunity to go over and help on the capital market side. And that's what we've been doing since I joined basically end of August, or call it Labor Day of 2024