Up 35%: Far East Gold charges out of the ASX gate

Shares in Far East Gold are rising sharply on Monday after the copper-gold explorer enjoyed a strong IPO, with support from all corners of both institutional and retail investors.

It’s always a good sign when your top backers go in and go in hard. In FEG’s case, its top 20 shareholders have their hands on over 67% of issued capital.

Far East Gold (ASX:FEG) is now the newest copper gold explorer to start trading on the bourse following a $11.73mn raising at 0.20c per share.

The funds will see the miner zone-in on its underexplored mineral resources and cost efficient operations in the Aceh region of North Sumatra, Indonesia.

The ASX lister has six advanced staged copper and gold projects – three in Indonesia and three in Australia, spanning more than 47,000 hectares and with more than 41,500m of drilling completed to date.

Path opens for first-ever drilling at Woyla

One of its Indonesian projects, the Wonogiri tenement, has a growing JORC resource estimate of 996,500 ounces of gold and 190 million pounds of copper while its Woyla Project – the biggest site by area and potential value reached a huge milestone in August 2021.

FEG received confirmation that its application to change the forestry designation of 7,665 hectares of land had been successful, opening the path for the first-ever drilling and advanced exploration activities to occur on the project since the early 1990s.

In the past, previous owners including Barrick Gold and Newcrest identified several drill targets but were never able to start drilling due to the forestry designations. An issue that FEG has resolved.

QLD based gold-copper projects

The company’s three Australian projects are in Queensland’s Drummond Basin and Connors Arc areas.

FEG describes these projects as being highly prospective for epithermal gold and copper gold porphyry deposits which are close to world-class operational mine sites.

Drummond Basin has historically produced more than 4.5 million ounces of gold with a total known gold endowment of more than 7.5 million ounces of gold.

Both Drummond Basin and Connors Arc have proven to be fertile ground for the discovery of epithermal and intrusive related gold systems.

Backed by the biggest names in Aussie mining

The FEG board is backed by a few of the industry’s most recognised and respected diggers – including chairman and co-founder Paul Walker.

Walker is a legend. With 30 years’ experience in cracking open global business, capital raising and resource projects. Then there’s Denpasar-based non-executive director Justin Werner – a 20-year mining veteran and managing director of one of the world’s headline companies at the moment – the ~$4 billion Nickel Mines.

And finally, FEG’s CEO Shane Menere is an expert in leading major projects from exploration to operation.

The leadership team held a strong ~39% skin-in-the-game leading into the IPO – with the company having secured rights to 80-100% economic interest in the projects.

“As a junior explorer with advanced and highly prospective projects we are excited to continue our journey towards making Far East Gold a world-class, tier 1, multi-billion-dollar mining company and unlock significant value for our shareholders,” Walker said.

This article was developed in collaboration with Far East Gold, a Stockhead advertiser at the time of publishing.

This article does not constitute financial product advice. You should consider obtaining independent advice before making any financial decisions.