Resources Top 5: Thick copper-gold hit heats up Celsius' Philippines play

CLA’s Sagay Project demonstrates “large-scale potential” after a returned intersection of 319.5m at 0.53% copper and 0.13g/t gold from 837.8m
Yandal Resources founding MD and CEO steps down
Golden Cross Resources and Horseshoe Metals up whopping amounts after coming out of suspension

Here are the biggest small cap resources winners in early trade, Friday February 18.

CELSIUS RESOURCES (ASX:CLA)

CLA is focussed on copper-gold exploration and development in the Philippines. Its assets were previously owned by Freeport-McMoRan, one of the world’s largest copper-gold producers, before being acquired and subsequently vended into CLA.

This morning the company confirmed “large-scale copper-gold” at the Nabiga-A Hill prospect within the Sagay Project on the north-eastern part of Negros Island.

This compliments 25,056m of previous drilling across 31 diamond drill holes at the site costing around A$10.8 million.

True widths of up to 300m based on a 0.2% copper cut-off were intersected in drill hole SGY-03.

The total intersection recorded 319.5m at 0.53% copper and 0.13g/t gold from 837.8m.

CLA managing director Robert Gregory said copper-gold mineralisation at Nabiga-A Hill “clearly has large scale potential.”

“On the surface there is a silica cap and alteration typical of a big porphyry system.

“Defining the trend of the mineralisation now gives us the opportunity to test how far the system extends to the surface beneath the silica cap.

YANDAL RESOURCES (ASX:YRL)

This gold explorer is up on no news today but announced late yesterday afternoon that founding managing director and CEO, Lorry Hughes has “tendered his resignation” and plans to step down to pursue other interests.

An economic geologist by trade with more than 25 years’ experience, Hughes has been described as an overall ‘good bloke and great geo’ by some – with previous roles including positions at Rio Tinto, Barrick Gold, CSA Global, and Energy Metals.

YRL’s share price dipped 14% following the announcement, however, seems to be recovering this morning.

Current non-executive chairman Timothy Kennedy will transition into the role of managing director and CEO from April, 4.

DACIAN GOLD (ASX:DCN)

(Up on no news)

West Australian based gold explorer DCN is riding high this morning on no real news, although earlier this week the company increased its total ore reserves by 13% after releasing maiden ore reserves for the Hub and GTS deposits, part of the wider Redcliffe Gold Project in the north-eastern Goldfields.

Total company reserves now stand at 11.8Mt at 1.1 g/t for 436,000oz before FY2022 depletion while the maiden ore reserve for Hub and GTS open pits sit at 490,000t at 3.2 gt for 51,000oz.

Dacian is developing both pits with mining planned to begin sometime during July 2022.

“Mined ore will be hauled by road trains to the existing processing plant at Mt Morgans Gold Operation,” the company said.

“The development contemplates multiple open pits at Hub, a single open pit at GTS, and the construction of site infrastructure to support the mining operation.”

GOLDEN CROSS RESOURCES (ASX:GCR)

Copper explorer GCR is up, up, up by 742% today after coming out of suspension and completing a $1.5m cap raise, satisfying the ASX’s conditions of reinstatement.

Back in January, the company received infill and extension surface sampling assay results over part of its Copper Hill tenement exploration licence north of Molong in New South Wales.

A preliminary review of plotted data showed that copper is elevated east of the former open-cut and low over the open-cut area itself.

While the +700% gain was impressive, the numbers on reinstatements can look distorted when assessed in the context of trading prices before the stock was suspended.

The $1.5m raised fell short of the maximum $3m that GCR flagged in its revised prospectus to resume trading, and was equal to the amount underwritten by Martin Place Securities.

Golden Cross issued the stock at 30c, which is still a material premium to this morning’s trading price of ~18c. However, that 18c is around 8x higher than the ~2c GCR traded at before it went into suspension.

The company had A$1.34m cash in the bank at the end of the December quarter.

HORESHOE METALS (ASX:HOR)

Like Gold Cross Resources, HOR has just come out of suspension this morning following a capital raise of $2.18 million and having satisfied ASX conditions of reinstatement.

This means the copper-gold explorer is in a good financial position to carry out further exploration across its portfolio of projects in Western Australia (Horseshoe Lights and Kumarina) and South Australia (Glenloth).

HOR is well and truly back in the game with shares up a cracking 150%.

The company is in a joint venture agreement with Kopore Metals (ASX:KPT) at the Horseshoe Lights Mine where KPT successfully met the first year minimum expenditure earlier this month.

A ground base dipole IP geophysical survey will begin sometime in February over the Horseshoe West prospect to test for conductive units across magnetic targets identified back in July 2021.