Mako Mining – Q1 2022 Financials And 2 New Veins Discovered At The San Pablo Zone
Akiba Leisman, President and CEO of Mako Mining (TSX.V:MKO – OTCQX:MAKOF), joins us to review the Q1 2022 financials and an exploration update at the San Albino Gold Mine in northern Nicaragua. With an average blended head-grade of 7 – 9 g/t gold, and a $862 Total Cash Costs and $1,104 All-In Sustaining Costs (“AISC”), the $17.3 million in revenue and $8.7 million in Mine Operating Cash is quite robust coming out of San Albino. We ask Akiba to unpack how the production profile will be expanding from 500 tpd to 1000 tpd, and where that growth will be coming from at San Albino, Las Conchitas, and eventually regional targets like La Segoviana and Porta Rios, to essentially double the production rate in 2023.
Next we dig into the drill results and new discovery the company just announced today at the San Pablo Zone at the Las Conchitas-North, where 19 holes have been drilled , which has resulted in the discovery of two new veins, the Mina Francisco and the Tirado vein. Some of the 5 first dill hole assays returned in this area include the Mina Francisco vein returning 51.80 g/t Au and 29.8 g/t Ag over 0.90 m (ETW), the San Pablo vein returning 27.60 g/t of Au and 17.1 g/t of Ag over 0.50 m (ETW), and the Tirado vein returning 39.30 g/t Au and 49.0 g/t Ag over 0.50m (0.4 m ETW). The company launched a $17 million exploration program in March for 2022 with the goal of drilling 110,000 meters at near mine and regional targets, and there will be continuing exploration news in the months to come.
If you have any questions for Akiba about Mako Mining, then please email us at either Fleck@kereport.com or Shad@kereport.com.
Click here for a summary of the recent news out of the Company.
Hi Terry, be careful of what you wish for they may decide to do a reverse split at 10 to 1. As soon as a reverse split is announced I sell! DT👍
DT, a while back on CEO.CA he was already talking about doing a reverse split.
That could be a viable option to do the reverse split for Mako, and wouldn’t be a reason to sell in my opinion, and I’m a current shareholder. The different would be that unlike a penny dreadful drillplay rolling back shares to perpetually raise and dilute existing shareholder, with a company in production and cashflowing, then the reverse split is meaningless from a Market Cap standpoint, and since they don’t need to perpetually raise capital it won’t be a dilution machine like so many Junior explorers and developers are.
Make has clear operational value-drivers that are easy to understand for anyone following along, and with them doing over 100,000 meters of drilling this year, funded from their operations, why would anyone care if they roll back their shares?
Again, as a current shareholder, I’d be open to that idea in Mako’s case. Not all share splits are negative with revenue-generating companied, and quite often when larger companies and producers roll back shares this helps them gain the big board US listing and attract more institutional investors as many need a higher share price over $3 to play ball. From that standpoint a rollback would be a net positive overall.
As someone that has followed Akiba’s other companies like Marlin and Sailfish, their team has a pattern of buying back their shares, and I believe we’ll see that more as time goes on. Not many mining companies can say that these days, and many are still blowing through money, but not returning value back to shareholders. Akiba mentioned in this interview that they’ve already started buying back some shares, and we’ve seen them doing that over at Sailfish as well.
Buying back shares is an incentive for existing shareholders. I like that kind of return of shareholder value personally, and if you listened closely to the interview you’d pick up that they’ve paid down a lot of debt to Wexford already with their cash-flowing mine, and have been incrementally paying back their gold loan to Sailfish as well. Once they make more progress on that over the next year or so, I’m personally anticipating even more value returned to shareholders in the form of more stock buybacks.
In the Mako Mining Q1 Financial report released May 31st:
>> Subsequent to March 31, 2022
“401,500 shares purchased under the normal course issuer bid for total consideration of $94,340 (C$121,770)”
“Two monthly repayment installments totaling $0.8 million were made on the Sailfish Loan”
“Principal repayments of $0.5 million were made on the Wexford Loan”
“Total principal repayment of approximately $9.0 million since the beginning of Q4 2021 to Wexford and Sailfish”
https://makominingcorp.com/news-media/press-releases/index.php?content_id=287
People write to me every week from ceo.ca and here the KE Report, running stocks by me, asking about stocks I like, pitching me stocks (I probably get pitched a dozen times each week on different companies). Lot’s of people come out and ask me directly which stocks I like, and my personal preference at the moment is for precious metals producers with large exploration upside, and I’ve been fortifying royalty positions throughout the course of 2022.
Out of that category of “growth-oriented producers” these are the companies have a large planned increase to their production profile by increasing throughput, expanding mill size, building secondary mills, building new inclines or accessing new areas of a mine, bringing on more open pits, etc…. coupled with large exploration and resource expansion plan.
These growth-oriented producers with large exploration upside are what Jordan Roy-Byrne referred to as the “Holy Grail” of mining stocks, and they have been my renewed focus over the last 2 years during the corrective move in PMs personally, because I’ve found most earlier stage explorers to be let downs over time, and the developers seem to be dead in the water until sentiment improves in the sector.
Mako Mining definitely fits the bill as a producer, getting ready to double production output over the next 2 years by expanding their mill from 500 tpd to 1,000 tpd, by bringing on more satellite open pits, and through aggressive land permitting and exploration, where they are spending $17+ million this year and will likely drill over 100,000 meters between the 5 diamond core rigs and the 2 additional scout RC drill rigs. If they keep finding more high-grade veins like they’ve already demonstrated they just did at Las Conchitas, then it is going to be quite riveting to follow their growth. This is why I’m a happy shareholder and have been for a while in Mako.
Other growth-oriented gold producers with big exploration upside in addition to Mako that I hold in my portfolio are Calibre Mining , Karora Resources, Superior Gold, i-80 Gold Corp, Steppe Gold, Thor Explorations, Aris Gold, Golden Minerals, and Minera Alamos.
To be clear, I hold other gold and silver producers besides those (about 18 more producers actually), and have another 7 royalty stocks with their own growing production profiles, but those listed above appear to me to have the most aggressive growth/exploration profiles in the small to mid-tier gold producers space.
Now there’s a morning chuckle for me….. read that one just before I was going to ask if anyone follows royal fox or has an opinion.
“You know, I said there’s storm clouds, but I’m going to change it…..it’s a hurricane”, CNBC quoted Jamie Dimon (CEO Of JP Morgan) at a financial conference in New York yesterday. “You’d better brace yourself.
During the last month or two stocks rose and fell uncertainly, sinking dismally for a time in May, and the level of broker’s loans dipped a little, but no general liquidation took place. Gradually money has begun to find it’s way more plentifully into speculative use despite the barriers raised by The Federal Reserve. Now in June It appears the advance in prices has begun once more, almost as if nothing has happened. The Reserve authorities are beaten. DT
Yep, we are seeing the calm before the storm it would seem. Many technicians we respect like Dana Lyons and TG Watkins, who both called the corrective move in the general markets over the last 6 months correctly and have both been shorting the markets, mentioned about 2-3 weeks back that things were so oversold that things were due for a dead cat bounce relief rally in the markets, and that is what we’ve seen play out with the reprieve in selling pressure, and a lift in equities prices. Both of them removed their shorts to a degree and Dana mentioned going long a few indexes for a shorter-duration trade, but they are watching for a bounce up to key resistance levels to put short trades back on again, and I may join them on the next short, once this relief rally plays out.
Well things are panning out as I predicted. I expect the silver miners to crush the nasdaq for the next 12 months before they take a break. I am expecting nothing short of a moonshot in the ratio.
Also, GCC is so far staying within a range for the last 4 months or so and I expect that continue until the 100 WMA has caught up to price, which could happen early next year. At that point, I think it will be ready for another leg higher. One thing I expect will happen is the weekly MACD will approach the zero line at the end of the consolidation. As a result, I expect we will get a very swift drop to the bottom of its trading range at some point to really get the weekly MACD trajectory pointed downwards. However, I expect price to stay within the well-established range while the MACD works its way lower.
Finally, I am not sure what the trajectory of the silver miners will be in absolute terms. Most have serious overhead resistance (for example, $14 for AG and $2.10 for AXU–and heck, for AXU to make it back to that resistance level it will have basically tripled), but I think by early next year they will manage to break though. It’s possible they smash through resistance much sooner, but I am going to look at these relatively conservatively. I think 2023-2025 is going to be crazy on the upside.
This is my final post. Good luck to everyone and stay safe. I have a feeling the US is in for a not so pleasant future over the next few years.
You’re call was indeed a timely one. Unless I missed something (which wouldn’t surprise me), it seems your outlook became the opposite of what it had been until recently. If so, way to go. Too many people marry one view and ignore important developments that should cause them to change their mind.
Regarding the overhead resistance you mentioned, I think it will be reached early enough relative to the weekly and monthly chart pictures to be overcome fairly easily.
SILJ is now up 21% since last month’s low when certain people were happier being in cash and saw much lower lows ahead despite the 35% plunge in 3 weeks. Talk about looking a gift horse in the mouth. Sellers get greedy at tops and buyers get greedy at bottoms.
SILJ now needs to clear 13 for a couple of daily closes…
https://stockcharts.com/h-sc/ui?s=SILJ&p=D&yr=0&mn=6&dy=0&id=p86332159306
After paying off all loans Akiba could start buying back about
500,000,000 shares, bring the share count back to earth. That would make all current shareholders happy.