September 10, 2024
Dear Fellow Shareholders,
We are very excited to write to you at what we expect to be a company-defining period and inflection point for Kincora Copper Limited (“Kincora” or the “Company”).
Recently, Kincora has achieved a number of key milestones delivering on our strategy that underpins entering this exciting next phase.
This is driven by having secured what we feel is the best porphyry focused exploration portfolio in Australia, concluding a number of initial commercial deals and having drilling ramping up seeking to deliver globally significant copper-gold discoveries – key programs and value catalysts are imminent.
Major New Exploration Partners – Recently the Company has attracted four industry partners and unlocked up to $60 million of multi-year funding. These deals also provide clear technical endorsement of, and value parameters for, these early stage and/or non-core projects.
In 2023, the capital markets for junior explorers changed and we have proactively changed with it. We secured 100% ownership of all NSW projects in December 2023, which was a key catalysts in seeking partner deals to support a sustainable next phase of drilling while providing a very leveraged investment scenario for shareholders at the listed company level.
Retained Our Best Ground And Picked Up New Prospects – Kincora has deliberately sought not to “sell the farm at the bottom of the cycle” and to retain our more advanced and flagship exploration projects (eg Fairholme, Trundle and Condobolin), which are proximal to existing mines and/or adjacent common mineral system (eg Cowal, Northparkes and Mineral Hill respectively).
The potential value of these more advanced and flagship exploration projects has recently been evidenced by direct peer projects and exploration analogues which have been recognised by the market. Notable exploration successes include Australian Gold and Copper (AGC.ASX – recent >5x) with its Achilles project (a new Cobar style discovery, comparable to our Condobolin project) and also Waratah Resources (WTM.ASX – recent >6x) with its exploration success at Spur (an underlying porphyry system with a number of similarities to our Trundle project).
Only this week we announced opportunistically securing three new bolt on wholly owned licenses covering 1,377km2 (named Nyngan South, Nyngan West and Nevertire South). This 100% owned new ground consolidates the immediate extensions of our Nyngan and Nevertire projects (<1000km2) held in our earn-in partnership with AngloGold Ashanti (the world’s fourth largest gold miner by production).
It also doubles Kincora’s position on the Macquarie Arc Northern Junee-Narromine Belt and provides continuous landholding along >100km strike of the Arc.
Coupled with the recent addition of the Wongarbon project (in June), with these new projects we are looking to confirm new district scale discoveries, hosting a series of new deposits, within the covered extension of the Macquarie Arc.
The scale and strategic appeal of the four new projects (in total >1500km2) that Kincora has pegged this year (at very minimal cost) is reinforced by Gold Fields (the worlds fifth largest gold miner by production) only in late August re-entering our district with a very significant earn-in deal with privately owned Gold & Copper Resources who has approximately 1500km2 of ground around Cadia.
Major Drilling Program On The Way Allows For News Flow And Share Price Appreciation – This next phase for Kincora is ramping up right now with preparations for a number of very significant programs, including one where we receive a management fee that helps reduce the Company’s cash burn (significantly reduced following our recent Mongolian project portfolio transaction).
Kincora shareholders are now expected to have exposure to up to 10,000m of drilling in next 6 months (via partner funding) and then targeting 30,000m+ of annual drilling.
We currently have drill results and follow up drilling pending from our Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning partner (Earth AI) at the Cundumbul project, and, surveys ongoing with our geophysical partner (Fleet Space Technologies) at the Nyngan project.
Drilling kicks off next month with earn-in partner AngloGold Ashanti (at the Nyngan project) and Woomera Mining (at the Bronze Fox project in Mongolia) where we will shortly become their largest shareholder.
We are not finished. More deals, partnerships and projects with a clear value path are proposed.
The big players are investing heavily right where we are located – It is important to note that the more well explored sections of the Macquarie Arc already host over 160Moz gold equivalent in resource endowment. This endowment includes two recent >10Moz gold equivalent series of discoveries and resource growth (by Evolution Mining at its flagship Cowal mine and by Alkane Resources at the Boda-Kaiser deposits).
Prospective early stage porphyry ground in the Macquarie Arc has recently been the focus of five large earn-in and joint venture agreements supporting potentially over $300 million of exploration expenditure covering over 10,000 km2. The recent exploration success by Waratah at the Spur target, coupled with resource growth at Cowal and Boda-Kaiser highlights the upside potential of the existing known and open mineral systems in the district (such as our Fairholme and Trundle projects).
The value of the world-class mines in the Macquarie Arc are clearly demonstrated by Australia’s two largest porphyry mines, Cadia and Northparkes, being acquired in corporate transactions last year.
The value of a new new porphyry district has only again been highlighted recently by BHP and Lundin Mining in the Vicuna district in the Central Andes with four large scale discoveries currently having a total current market value of over C$8.5 billion (and all being at the pre-development phase).
These four projects previously sat within NGEx Resources with a capitalisation of only C$40 million at the pre-discovery stage and are situated in a strike of less than 50km (and at over 4000m altitude).
We encourage shareholders and potential investors to review the detailed corporate presentation accompanying this letter that provides further details on the Company’s hybrid approach to create shareholder value with catalysts from:
(i) securing highly strategic projects, supporting our view of Kincora holding the best porphyry focused exploration portfolio in Australia,
(ii) doing further deals with funding and technical partners, and,
(iii) ramping up drilling providing shareholders economic exposure to potential Tier-1 copper-gold discoveries. Link: https://kincoracopper.com/corporate-presentation/
Further project level summaries with supporting presentations are available at https://kincoracopper.com under the projects tab.
In all aspects of our business, the Company retains our focus on the safety and wellbeing of our staff, engaging proactively with stakeholders and creating shareholder value.
Thank you for your support and we look forward to advising of further value enhancing developments.
Regards,
Cameron McRae Sam Spring
Chairman of the Board President and CEO