Due to the pandemic, the 2020 and 2021 Discovery Awards had to be handed over to the winners Adriatic Metals and Greatland Gold without the presence on a major event. On November 19, the prestigious award was presented again for the first time in two years during a large-scale conference, the mining & exploration event Deutsche Goldmesse in Frankfurt.
The nominees for the 2022 CDFund Discovery Award were:
The final shortlist and selection of the winner was made according to the criteria we use to manage holdings in the fund. The winner fits perfectly into the Discovery Investing model. Essentially this comes down to the quality of the discovery hole, the subsequent confirmation of the discovery in subsequent drillings, exploration that points to a world-class deposit, a producer as a partner with the interest and ability to take the project to production, a very probable prospect of an acquisition, and especially value creation for our portfolio.
The full jury report with more information about the nominees can be found here.
Winner CDFund Discovery Award 2022
This year's winner fits perfectly into our Discovery Investing model. That's why Filo Mining was awarded the CDFund Discovery Award 2022!
Filo develops the huge tier 1 Filo del Sol copper-gold porphyry in Argentina, close to the Chilean border. With a total resource of nearly 9 mil oz of gold, 300 million oz of silver and 4.3 billion pounds of copper, this is an incredibly large metal deposit. About two-fifths of this is in oxides susceptible to heap leaching, and this portion is subject to a PFS that has an NPV of $1.28 billion, an IRR of 23%, and annual gold production of 160,000 oz, 8.6 million oz silver and 67kt copper. Although the project was discovered way back in 1999, the stock went into discovery overdrive with a 13th May 2021 hole of 858 m @ 1.8% Cu eq. The company's valuation rose as its share price rose from $4 to a peak of $26.50 a year later.
The company is operated by a team with close ties to the Lundin Mining group, and BHP owns 5% of the company. Access to water in this region is often an issue, but Filo can source this from aquifers. A project this size is inevitably burdened with a large capex, and given the run up in valuation to $2.3b, it will be a stretch to see a double from here: the discovery phase has very much run its course. However, exploration upside in the sulphides is still massive, and we believe they will be producing at Filo del Sol for decades.
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