This morning our gold Investment Tempus Resources (ASX: TMR) increased the size of its capital raise due to “increased investor demand”.

The capital raise will see TMR raise a total of ~$1.4M via two separate issues:

1. Raising ~$1.1M at 6.7c per share by issuing “flow-through shares”.
2. Raising ~336k at 5.6c per share by issuing ordinary shares.

Both issues are coming with 1:1 free “warrants” (options) with a two year expiry and exercise price of ~10c per share.

The difference in the capital raise pricing is because of the type of shares being issued.

“Flow-through shares” are a type of share issuance in Canada which gives investors certain tax deductions. This means companies are able to raise capital at premiums to the current market price - in TMR’s case this is an almost ~10% premium to the current market price.

The second issue is more representative of the type of capital raises we are used to on the ASX, with TMR issuing shares at a discount to its current market price of ~10%.

What’s next for TMR?

Assays from 40 hole drilling program at TMR’s Canadian gold project 🔄

TMR has ~21 assay results pending.

We are particularly interested in seeing what comes from the remaining assays at the No.9 Vein.

Given TMR is targeting thin gold veins, our focus will predominantly be on the grades of mineralisation.

We expect that anything above ~4-5g/t of gold will mean TMR could be onto something commercially mineable.

Updated mineral resource estimate 🔄

Since acquiring its project in 2019 TMR has completed three drilling programs for a total of ~80 new holes.

On top of this TMR completed ~49 drillholes in 2010 and 2011 that all sit outside of the current mineral resource estimate of 300k ounces of gold.

TMR will be looking to include all ~129 new drillholes in an updated mineral resource estimate that it expects to be ready in Q1-2023.

To do that TMR will have ~275% more drillholes than the 74 used to put together the ~300k ounce 2009 historic resource estimate.

This morning our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX: TMR) put out assay results from its no.9 Vein at its gold project in Canada.

Today’s assays come from the area we highlighted could (based on assays) be home to the discovery of a whole new vein and is also where TMR hit a ~25.75m quartz vein with visible gold.

We listed the assays from the holes at no.9 vein as something we were looking out for, check out our TMR ‘Progress Tracker’ to see that slide.

The highlight intercept from today’s results was 87g/t across 2.11m from a depth of ~135m.

This is well above the 5g/t base case expectation we set for grades going into this round of drilling which could mean TMR are starting to define an entirely new high grade vein system at the No.9 Vein.

While today’s news was positive, the main intercept we are looking forward to seeing the assays from is the 25.75m thick quartz vein that TMR hit and found visible gold in.

If we see high grade gold mineralisation over that entire interval then we think this could be a major catalyst for TMR’s share price.

What’s next?

TMR recently confirmed its 2022 drilling program was completed for a total of 40 holes over 9,760m.

As of today’s announcement we have results from the first 19 holes which means there is still ~21 assays pending. As before, we are particularly interested in seeing what comes from the remaining assays at the No.9 Vein.

Ultimately TMR will be looking to include the results of past few drilling programs (~129 new drillholes) in an updated resource estimate which is likely to come after all of the assays are released.

Our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) has intersected more visible gold in drilling targeting the No. 9 Vein at the Elizabeth Gold Project in Southern British Columbia, Canada.

Drilling identified visible gold in several locations in quartz veining over a length of approximately 2 metres.

TMR has now drilled nine holes into the No. 9 Vein — a previously mapped vein located approximately 120 metres northwest of TNR’s Blue Vein discovery — and this is the third drillhole reporting visible gold in the core.

Wide zones of mineralisation are being seen with assays pending for all nine drillholes.

If the assays come back positive, this No. 9 Vein could help meet our #1 and #2 Key Objectives for TMR as outlined in our Investment Memo. Plus, it could prove to be a more significant result than more hits during infill and extensional drilling at the Blue Vein discovery.

Positive assay results could also see the No. 9 Vein make a significant contribution to achieving our Big Bet for TMR: “TMR becomes a gold producer following the discovery of enough new gold sources to justify the restart of its onsite gold mill”.

Blue Vein update

Today’s news follows assay results from Blue Vein last week, in which a total of three assays intersected gold mineralisation.

The highlight intercept was from hole 11 where TMR hit 11.75g/t gold over 2.3 metres from a depth of ~102m. Inside that intercept TMR hit a higher grade zone of gold mineralisation, grading ~85.2g/t.

But the key takeaway was less to do with the grade, rather the extension of gold mineralisation which now sits at a total of ~180m at the Blue Vein discovery.

This means that the Blue Vein’s strike length is now larger than that of the SW Vein (80m), which contained almost 70% of the historical mineral resource for TMR’s project.

Our TMR “Progress Tracker” has been updated to include the latest news — click on the slide below to see the full slide deck.

What’s next?

TMR has extended the 2022 drilling program through to the end of October and plans to drill a further 10 drillholes (approximately 2,000 metres).

We are particularly interested in the pending assay results from the visible gold intercepts made at the No.9 Vein and hope to see TMR continue to drill out for extensions at the Blue Vein discovery.

Readers who follow our Investment Portfolios will know that we have been making strategic Investments in commodities that have made critical minerals lists for the EU, USA, Japan, India and Australia.

These minerals are considered critical to the digitisation and decarbonisation macro thematic and include lithium, graphite, cobalt, nickel and PGE’s, to name a few.

Over the weekend, the following speech from the president of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, gave a speech announcing that the EU would look to pass a “European Critical Minerals Act”.

The aim is to avoid the position Europe finds itself in with oil and gas, where it relies on a single trading partner like Russia.

The act would see the EU put in place:

1. Agreements with partners like Chile, New Zealand, Mexico, India and Australia for the supply of critical minerals.
2. Identification of strategic projects across all along the supply chain from mine sites to processing/refining projects.
3. The act would also see the setting up of strategic reserves of these critical minerals.

All of this bodes well for our Investments across commodities identified as “critical minerals” giving these projects strategic importance on the world stage.

To see a list of all the critical minerals in the Australian Critical Minerals strategy document, check out the following link.

Here is a snippet from that speech:

Yesterday our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) completed a further capital raise through a non-renounceable entitlement offer.

TMR raised a total of $3.9M at a share price of 5c with all of the shares expected to be issued on the 5th of September (next Monday).

The offer also comes with one for one unlisted options exercisable at 7.5c per share.

Of the total amount raised existing shareholders applied for $1.9M and the remainder through the shortfall facility.

We also noticed that non-executive chairman Alexander Molyneux took $125K of the offer through the partial underwriting of the offer. With these type capital raises we always look for director participation as it provides a good indicator as to how the people closest to the business view the company’s market valuation.

Together with the placement completed in July TMR has now raised $4.9M adding to the company’s existing cash balance of $1.1M on 30 June 2022.

With the company’s balance sheet strengthened we turn our attention over to the ongoing drilling program at the company’s Canadian gold project.

Next:

We want to see the assay results from the recent visible gold intercept TMR made.

To see how we are tracking TMR’s news flow check out our company “Progress Tracker” to see TMR’s whole journey from project acquisition to where it is now, as well as where the company is trying to take it.

Click here to see our TMR ‘Progress Tracker’

Late last week our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) detailed its latest capital raise.

TMR raised a total of $1.05M via a placement at 5c per share with the shares expected to be issued on 3 August (this Wednesday).

TMR plans to use the cash to finance the ongoing drilling program at its Canadian gold project where the company has already drilled the first 14 of the planned 30 drillholes.

Investors who participated in the raise also got issued one free option for every share purchased. The options expire in three years and are exercisable at 7.5c per share.

We also saw the company announce an entitlement offer of up to $3.9M in new shares for existing shareholders, on the same terms and conditions as the placement.

We especially like that TMR has kept the placement portion of the raise small. and offered almost 4x more in shares to existing shareholders. With the share price trading at ~7c per share, the entitlement offer gives existing shareholders the opportunity to top up their shareholdings at a discount to the current market price for TMR.

Given where the company’s share price is trading, we like that TMR hasn’t solely reserved the placement for sophisticated investors.

The key dates for the entitlement offer are:

• Ex date 9 August 2022 - This is when TMR shares start trading on an ex-rights basis, meaning the rights will no longer apply if shares are purchased on or after this day.
  
  
• Record date 10 August 2022 - This is the date at which entitlements are calculated, i.e if you are a shareholder in TMR at this date then you get to purchase shares in the entitlement offer.
  
  
• Offer closing date 29 August 2022 - Last day to accept entitlement.
  
  
• Offer issue date 5 September 2022 - This is when the entitlement offer shares are expected to be issued.

Spanning three days on the pristine Sunshine Coast of Queensland, the Noosa Mining Investor Conference kicked off its 12th year on Wednesday. Attracting a diverse and large spread of corporates, brokers, retail and institutional investors, this year’s event featured over 60 companies presenting and over 1,000 people in attendance, all hosted within the coastal town's Peppers Resort.

At the event, we caught up with a number of executives from our Investment companies (including AKN, AOU, BPM and PFE) as well as companies of interest, either as potential additions to one of our Portfolios, or to gain expert insight to macro and regional headwinds impacting the markets.

The conference is held in the ideal location to mix work with pleasure, and meet a host of CEOs of ASX juniors. Each day ends with a short ‘business at the bar’ session that quickly morphs into talking tactics about where to eat and drink. On Thursday and Friday nights, many head to the Noosa Surf Club for its networking sessions, enjoying its glassed indoor area and open deck to the beach.

We look forward to providing updates on companies we met with down the road.

China plans to make up to US$1.1 trillion in financing available for infrastructure spending, which we think will increase commodity demand. Read the following Bloomberg article for details.

Read the full article here.

Below are our key takeaways:

• China is making 7.2 trillion yuan ($1.1 trillion) in funds available for infrastructure spending.
• According to Citigroup, infrastructure investment in 2022 is likely to rise by 7.7% versus 2021.
• President Xi Jinping has called for an “all out” effort to increase infrastructure spending this year to fuel economic growth and meet a GDP growth target of around 5.5%.

The Bloomberg article touches on the impacts of China’s COVID induced lockdowns on the domestic economy.

With economic growth tipped to slow, the Chinese government is getting ready to lean on fiscal stimulus through infrastructure investment to spur economic growth.

We think this type of fiscal stimulus is likely to become a common theme in China and the West, with macro themes like decarbonisation requiring massive CAPEX.

This infrastructure spending forms part of our “commodities supercycle” investment thesis, where we see increased fiscal stimulus and CAPEX investment spurring higher demand for commodities already facing supply shortages.

The following Bloomberg article highlights China’s plan to spend up to US$220 billion to spur economic growth through infrastructure spending.

All of this new infrastructure will require more commodities.

Read the full article here.

Below are our key takeaways:

• China’s Ministry of Finance is considering US$220 billion of infrastructure funding aimed at shoring up the country’s beleaguered economy.
  
  
• The funding is to be brought forward from next year’s quota, marking the first time the issuance has been brought forward due to concerns around the dire state of the world’s second largest economy.
  
  
• The funding would primarily be used on infrastructure spending to boost an economy hit by Covid lockdowns and a housing downturn.
  
  
• Commodities rallied in European trading hours following the news, with copper moving 3.6% higher on the London Metal Exchange.

For over two years, we have been writing about an upcoming commodities supercycle brought about by infrastructure spending, following decades of underinvestment in the “real economy”.

All this investment in the “real economy” requires raw materials, which is why we think the macro backdrop for commodities over the next decade is strong.

The Bloomberg article highlights the readiness of the Chinese government to lean on fiscal stimulus to spur economic growth at a time when the Chinese economy is slowing down.

Generally, governments would try to respond to slowdowns in economic growth by cutting interest rates. With this tool exhausted after the COVID pandemic, we think infrastructure spending will become the new policy of choice for governments worldwide.

Again, this infrastructure spending will increase demand for commodities which we expect will take commodity prices higher.

The following Bloomberg article showcases the moves major carmaker Volkswagen is making in the batteries industry.

Read the full article here.

Below are our key takeaways:

• VW is pressing forward with investments along its battery supply chain, commencing construction at a new cell factory in Salzgitter, Germany, one of five facilities in Europe under the carmaker’s PowerCo subsidiary.
  
• Salzgitter is home to VW’s main motor factory, and it is where the company last year opened an $80 million facility to research, develop and test EV batteries.
  
• Roughly $2 billion will be invested in the new cell factory, where production is scheduled to begin in 2025.
  
• VW expects its battery business to generate €20 billion in revenue by the end of this decade.
  
• VW CEO Herbert Diess said, “We are invested in some startups and we are looking forward to a joint venture together with Bosch for the machine tools and equipment for those plants, so we’re really gearing up to become one of the bigger battery cell producers”.

The news is just another sign that downstream investment in battery supply chains is showing no signs of slowing down.

VW is one of the world's largest carmakers and is heavily investing in downstream production capacity. It expects this part of its business to generate over €20 billion in revenues by the end of the decade.

This is a situation where investment in midstream/downstream (manufacturing/battery industry) is far ahead of upstream investment (mining), this leads to the supply/demand imbalances for the raw materials required to produce batteries only becoming worse.

The imbalance comes from the timing of these mega projects. Building a downstream / midstream facility could take 1-4 years whereas it takes around 7 years on average to bring a new resource discovery into the production stage.

As a result, we think that raw materials prices will remain high for at least the next decade whilst the mining industry catches up to demand.

This morning our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX: TMR) released more preliminary drilling results, reporting more visible gold intercepts at the Blue Vein discovery at its Canadian gold project.

This is the second set of visible gold intercepts since TMR started its 2022 drilling program on 30 May 2022.

TMR has completed ~2,200 metres of drilling over nine holes targeting the Blue Vein. Assays for the first few holes are pending, with results expected over the next few weeks.

This year’s program consists of up to 30 drillholes (for ~8,500m) focused on the following targets:

• Blue Vein discovery: 15 drillholes targeting extensions to the previous high grade gold intercepts. (First 9 holes drilled here with two visible gold intercepts to date).
  
  
• Main and West veins: 10 drillholes targeting extensions to both discoveries.
  
  
• Ella Zone: 3 drillholes following up a 2m intercept made last year.
  
  
• Exploration holes: up to 5 drillholes focused on making new discoveries.

With assays pending and another ~21 drillholes to be completed, we are looking forward to the newsflow coming from TMR’s 2022 exploration program.

Investment Memo: TMR 2022

Objective #1: Make new discoveries at the Canadian gold project

Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) has provided an update on drilling at its Canadian gold project, reporting that it has intersected visible gold. (The market seems to like it as it’s the only stock in our portfolio that opened higher this morning.)

TMR have completed three diamond drill holes to date, targeting the southern extension of the Blue Vein, for a total of 645 metres.

Our first objective for TMR this year, as outlined in our 2022 Investment Memo was for the company to make new discoveries at its Canadian gold project. Works would include high impact drilling with a focus on discovering new gold veins over the project area, and further drilling of the areas around the newly discovered Blue-Vein.

Today’s announcement works towards that objective, with visible gold observed in drill hole EZ22-03. This is an encouraging sign that the Blue Vein structure and gold mineralisation extends along strike to the south of last year’s discovery drill hole (EZ21-12).

The core from the first three drill holes is currently being cut with samples to be dispatched to the lab this week, so we look forward to those assays.

Investment Memo: TMR 2022

Key Objectives #3: Re-start exploration at the Ecuador Gold project, identify drill targets.

Yesterday morning our gold exploration Investment Tempus Resources (ASX: TMR) put out the results of its phase 2 exploration program at its gold project in Ecuador.

The Phase 2 program consisted of both rock chip and soil sampling works and was designed as a larger scale follow up program to all of the initial fieldwork done in February 2021.

More importantly though, the results from this program have now confirmed that the gold/copper anomalies picked up with this exploration program directly correlate with the geophysical anomalies that were picked up in 2019.

This now gives TMR a good idea of where it needs to focus its exploration programs in the future.

The anomalies are laid out in the image below inside the red/blue/yellow outlines with the white circles showing where this round of exploration focussed on.

Investment Memo: TMR 2022

Objective #1: Make new discoveries at the Canadian gold project.

This morning our junior gold exploration investment Tempus Resources (ASX:TMR) commenced its 2022 exploration program at its Canadian gold project.

The 2022 drilling program is following up over ~39-holes (9,826m) of drilling that TMR has completed since November 2020.

This year’s program will consist of up to 30 drillholes (for ~8,500m), focused mostly on the following key targets:

• Blue Vein discovery: 15 drillholes targeting extensions to the previous high grade gold intercepts.
• Main and West veins: 10 drillholes targeting extensions to both of these discoveries.
• Ella Zone: 3 drillholes following up a 2m intercept made last year.
• Exploration holes: up to 5 drillholes focused on making new discoveries.

Below (in green) is where TMR plans to drill as part of the 2022 drilling program.

TMR’s goal for the program this year is to increase the historic resource to support the development of a high-grade mine. The company plans to put out an updated resource estimate on completion of the 2022 program.

This morning our gold exploration investment Tempus Resources’ (ASX:TMR) raised $762k via a private non-brokered placement at CAD$0.07 (7.4c).

With TMR currently trading at ~9c per share the placement comes at a ~18% discount to the current market price.

TMR had ~$2.4M of cash left at the 31st of December 2021 and the exploration window in Canada is set to re-open in ~May with TMR expecting to get its drill rigs turning in ~June.

TMR is planning a ~30 hole, 8,500m drilling program for 2022 focussed mainly on expanding the Blue Vein discovery (15 of the 30 holes to target the Blue Vein) as well as the development of other vein targets including the Main Vein, West Vein and Ella Zone.

The ultimate aim of the 2022 drilling program will be to put out an updated NI43-101 (Canadian resource estimation code) Resource estimate for the Elizabeth project following the completion of the 2022 drill program.

Two of the three objectives we set for what we wanted to see TMR achieve in 2022 relate to exploration at its Canadian gold project, to see these objectives and why we continue to hold TMR in our portfolio check out our 2022 Investment Memo here.