Never one to sit on its hands, Metal Tiger PLC (LON:MTR) has announced a boardroom restructuring.
A new chief executive has been appointed and current chief Paul Johnson become a consultant to oversee the expansion of the asset trading business.
The rationale behind the move is that the firm is in good position and the resource sector is about to enter a recovery phase and it wants to give returns back to shareholders.
The group has a metals projects division and a flourishing asset trading business, which in the six months to June 30 last year made gains of around £2.13mln, versus a gain of £534,300 in the same period last year.
Current non-exec director Alex Borrelli will become chief executive on October 17, while Johnson will begin focusing on crystallising value in current and future interests, to allow returns to shareholders.
Metal's already boasts a comprehensive list of mining juniors it has backed, including Ariana Resources (LON:AAU), Eurasia Mining (LON:EUA), Kibo Mining (LON:KIBO) and Greatland Gold (LON:GGP).
India-focused Kolar Gold (LON:KGLD) has now just been added to that list, which also does not include its own direct developments in Botswana and Thailand.
Botswana boost
In Botswana, from where most of the current newsflow has emanated, the group has released its first JORC resource at the T3 prospect, where extension drilling is now ongoing.
It has identified over 350,000 tonnes of copper so far.
Total resources were estimated at 28.36Mt at a grade of 1.24% copper and 15.7g/t of silver to give a resource for the prospect of approximately 350,200t.
That included a high grade core of 182,900t copper and 8.34Moz silver, while 64% of the Total resource tonnes were classified in the higher confidence Indicated resource category
Metal Tiger owns 30% of the prospect in the Kalahari copper belt, with joint venture partner and operator MOD Resources holding the remaining 70%.
Johnson has said that he hoped further exploration would uncover more metal at the site especially as some of the other targets in the area had even better copper indications than T3.
“There is significant likelihood of more discoveries to be made.”
Johnson added that the deposit was only discovered in March and to announce a JORC resource six months later was very fast work.
Speed of the essence.
But that is Metal Tiger’s style.
Timing so far has also been nigh on faultless, starting from an exceptional start with one of its first investments, thermal power station developer Kibo Mining.
Johnson described the process to Proactive.
“We spent some time sorting out the business into the third quarter of 2014, but then we invested £150,000 in Kibo Mining at 1.5p.”
Within days it was trading up to an intra-day price of 12p. The team at Metal Tiger live and breathe the markets, and they weren’t going to miss an opportunity like that, even if there had been a strong element of luck in the timing.
So, in early January, only a couple of months later, Metal Tiger cashed out of its initial Kibo shares, crystallising what it called a “significant return” much of which was rolled back into Kibo via early conversion of 10mln 3p warrants that were attached to the original placing.
As with all the company’s major equity investments it retains a material stake in Kibo.
“The Kibo transaction gave us some working capital, and we wanted to reinvest it quickly and efficiently. We rolled some of the money into an investment in Eurasia Mining,” continued Johnson.
Profits re-invested
That generated another short-term profit to the tune of £180,000, most of which was then ploughed back into Eurasia through early warrant conversion, after production mining approvals were granted to Eurasia for its West Kytlim platinum mine in Russia.
Metal Tiger has also invested £250,000 in Ariana Resources, which is now breaking ground on the construction of a Turkish gold mine at the Kiziltepe project.
As they used to say on daytime top 40 radio, “and the hits just keep on coming”.
In February, it checked out of ECR Minerals, selling shares for £180,000 and banking a profit of £80,000, though it retains 500mln warrants that it can exercise at any time up until November 2018 at a price of 0.04p.
In the same month it acquired a 28.25% stake in ISDX-listed ZimNRG, paying £50,000 to grab 19mln shares.
Network starts to broaden
This was cited as the first step in the broadening of the network of interests in other publicly listed companies through transactions that gave Metal Tiger a significant proportionate holding.
Other irons in the fire include a high grade silver-lead zinc refurbishment a couple of hundred miles north-west of Bangkok, where it has just thrashed out an agreement.
Johnson admits he likes this project, which comprises two former producing mines, a mass of tunnels and infrastructure such as a processing plant on site already.
More opportunities
Johnson said the company would also consider opportunities in other related sectors if the board considers there is an opportunity to generate an attractive return for shareholders.
This would include natural resource technologies and fintech opportunities offering leverage to resource identification, processing, recording, storage and trading businesses.
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