If you’re frustrated that you didn’t get in near the bottom, under 10 cents, on Gold Bullion Development, we have some good news for you.
Kent Exploration (KEX, TSX-V) has a current market cap almost identical to that of Gold Bullion when we first brought GBB to everyone’s attention last December ($5.6 million for Gold Bullion at that time, $7 million now for Kent).
The market has not yet fallen in love with Kent but it will very shortly – we are certain of that – so now is the time to accumulate a strong position in this stock while it’s still below its 52-week high of 24.5 cents.
Kent is one of the best-managed junior exploration companies we’ve ever come across. It has not one, not two, but three flagship properties. It is run by Graeme O’Neill, a native New Zealander who moved to British Columbia about 40 years ago. Over the past year in particular O’Neill has assembled a superb geological team and a strong “inside” team as well to move this company forward.
Late Friday Kent announced drilling is now underway at its Gnaweeda Gold Project in Western Australia. This joint venture with Teck covers a 28 kilometre strike length of highly prospective rocks in the Archean-age Gnaweeda Greenstone Belt, and overlies small historic gold workings and several gold prospects discovered by Newcrest Mining in the 1990’s.
“Dr. Gerry Ray, who did our 43-101, is really excited about this project,” O’Neill told us in a recent interview. “He looks at a lot of projects and he thinks this one is one of the cream of the crop…Kirkland Lake-style. He says you find one deposit, they’re like bells on a string. There’s always more. Typically you get two or three within a 10-15 kilometre strike.”
Kent has proposed a spin-off of the Gnaweeda Project into a new company, Archean Star Resources, which would give existing Kent shareholders one share in Archean Star for every four shares of Kent. The joint venture with Teck speaks volumes about what Kent brings to the table.
“Teck is such a storied company and they don’t go into anything lightly with anyone,” said O’Neill. “They were impressed with our technical team and I think that’s what actually tipped them to coming alongside us and working with us. We had to beat out some other companies and we were fortunate to be able to strike a deal.”
We are also very intrigued with Kent’s Alexander River Property in New Zealand which, like Gold Bullion’s Granada Property, is a former producer. Alexander River has a non-compliant historical resource of 640,000 ounces of gold which we believe Kent could very conceivably turn into a NI-43-101 of over one million ounces in all categories. Drilling is expected to start soon at Alexander River which rests just 20 kilometres south of OceanaGold’s (OGC, TSX) Globe Progress Mine.
Kent’s third flagship property is the Flagstaff Barite Deposit in eastern Washington State. To the best of our knowledge Kent is only publicly traded company in North America with a production-ready high grade barite deposit. We expect a lot of news regarding this over the next few months, and the potential annual cash flow to Kent is in excess of $1 million.
With a current market cap of just $7 million, Kent offers serious upside potential – identical to that of Gold Bullion Development and Seafield Resources when they were both trading under 10 cents. The time to be positioned in Kent is clearly now. The share structure is tight and O’Neill is extremely careful about dilution. There’s no “overhang” here – no cheap stock that will hit the market. And the fact a lot of investors won’t want to sell their Kent shares in order to get a piece of the action in Archean Star, the potential here for a massive move in Kent driven by a short supply of paper is very real. A classic demand-supply dynamic, we believe, is coming into play here.