BPM: About to drill WA gold project on same geological trend as nearby 8Moz Tropicana

Disclosure: S3 Consortium Pty Ltd (the Company) and Associated Entities own 4,002,865 BPM Shares and 850,000 BPM Options at the time of publishing this article. The Company has been engaged by BPM to share our commentary on the progress of our Investment in BPM over time. This information is general in nature about a speculative investment and does not constitute personal advice. It does not consider your objectives, financial situation, or needs.

This one is pretty simple...

Micro cap stock BPM Minerals (ASX:BPM) is just about to “roll the exploration dice” with its first drill program into its WA gold project...

nearby and on the same geological trend as the 8Moz gold Tropicana gold deposit:

(BPM’s project has been drilled before with high grade intercepts, open in all directions)

3,000m over 25 holes are now planned. BPM says the first drill hole is about to start “in the coming weeks”.

The gold price is still above US$4,000 per ounce...

Slightly off its all time highs, but still almost double where it was ~18 months ago.

Which means the market is still likely to reward genuine gold exploration success...

And on the ASX, “gold in WA” generally attracts a premium because of how well the market understands the type of deposits and the jurisdiction.

It might be hard to believe, but WA gold stocks pre-discovery often trade at premiums to companies with defined JORC resources in other parts of the world...

Which is why we are looking forward to seeing $10M capped BPM drill its WA gold asset in the coming weeks.

(BPM also held $2.9M cash at September 30th so looks well funded to run this drill campaign)

BPM’s project sits on the same type of geology (rocks) that hosts the 8M+ ounce Tropicana gold deposit.

The ASX market knows the Tropicana asset really well - it is 50% owned by $4.9BN Regis Resources and the other 50% by $53BN Anglo Gold.

Tropicana started getting more attention recently after M&A rumours started doing the rounds between the two JV partners earlier in the year.

(Source)

So there are a lot of market eyes on this part of WA specifically.

Today, BPM announced they have completed heritage surveys (the last remaining hurdle before BPM can start drilling) - and drilling is expected to start on its project “later this month”.

BPM’s first round of drilling is a 3,000m, 25-hole RC program on the “Beachcomber” prospect.

Beachcomber was actually first drilled by Anglo (the current majority owners of Tropicana) back in 2009 just after the original discovery of Tropicana ...

Anglo’s drilling on the target actually had visible gold near surface and delivered 9.7m of gold at 4.5g:

(Source)

The project hasn’t really been touched since Anglo drilled it back in 2009.

Understandably...

Anglo decided to walk away from the regional targets and focus all of its efforts on drilling out what would eventually become the 8M ounce monster they had just found at Tropicana.

(makes sense to us... we would be very happy if BPM also made a discovery even a fraction of the size of Tropicana and had to drop all of its regional targets too to focus on defining a giant new discovery).

Fortunately, it also meant that micro cap BPM gets to take the blocks and give them the drilling they probably would have got had Tropicana not been discovered.

What we want to see is BPM’s drilling show there is gold beyond those isolated high grade hits from Anglo’s drilling:

After that we can turn our attention to all the regional targets - which had even less attention shown to them by Anglo:

(Source)

A win for BPM from this first round of drilling would be strong enough results that take BPM’s market cap from where it is now at $10M to somewhere in the $30-40M range.

(that’s not a price target of course - this is early stage high risk exploration drilling and things can and do go wrong)

If all goes well, then BPM could then raise enough cash to really have a crack at its broader land package (or based on the results from the first round of drilling, define a big resource on that prospect).

We hold ~4.5% of BPM (4,002,865 shares and 850,000 oppies) so we are hoping they can pull it off...

BPM’s got a team who knows how to make a discovery

Another thing we liked about the deal for these new assets was that the project vendors Dr. Ross Chandler and Luke Blais also joined BPM (as Technical Advisor and Exploration Manager respectively).

Both were part of the Dreadnought Resources team which made the Yin rare earths discovery back in 2021-2022.

The two also received AMEC’s 2023 Prospector Award for their role in that discovery by Dreadnought.

(Source)

Dreadnought’s share price went from 2.4c to 15.5c off the back of that discovery - at one point the company was capped at ~$440M.

Unfortunately, the Dreadnought share price has come off a fair bit since then - but the main takeaway for us is that Ross and Luke have made valuable new discoveries before - hopefully something they can replicate with BPM.

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

Why we think a discovery would be valuable in this part of WA

We think that a big discovery on BPM’s project could be valuable because:

1. The market has an obvious comparison to point to when it comes to success in this part of WA (The 8M ounce Tropicana discovery), and;
2. The project is in an area that should get both corporate and market interest into it IF a discovery is made.

BPM’s project sits across major cross cutting shear zones - similar to Tropicana...

(We are not geologists, but just by looking at the map below, we can see there is correlation between the shear zones and gold deposits forming nearby)

BPM’s project is also close to multiple operating processing plants within a 200km radius of the project, which means if BPM is able to make a new discovery, it would have inherent value to the owners of those mills.

The positive from that is that there will be a fundamental valuation backstop on the discovery guided by what those mill owners are willing to pay for the resources in the ground.

Alternatively, BPM also gets multiple picks of mill owners it could negotiate toll-milling deals with.

Obviously it's still far too early to be thinking about who and which mill might take BPM ore, but it's nice to know there are options IF something is found.

That's an issue for later though, BPM will need to make an economic discovery of gold first.

At this stage the company has no defined resource estimates so talks of production are premature and more speculative than anything else.

Ultimately, our Big Bet for BPM is centred around exploration success as follows:

Our BPM Big Bet:

“BPM discovers and defines a large resource, leading to a long term re-rate in the company’s share price by >1,000%”

NOTE: our “Big Bet” is what we HOPE the ultimate success scenario looks like for this particular Investment over the long term (3+ years). There is no guarantee that our Big Bet will ever come true. There is a lot of work to be done, many risks involved, including development risk, country risk and commodity price risk - just some of which we list in our BPM Investment Memo.

Success will require a significant amount of luck. Past performance is not an indicator of future performance.

What’s next for BPM

Drilling at WA gold project 🔄

Next, we want to see BPM start its 25 hole, 3,000m RC drill program at Beachcomber.

BPM expects to start drilling before the end of this month.

Here are the milestones we will be tracking (we took these from the bottom of today’s announcement):

🔲 Drilling starts (before the end of this month)

🔲 Drilling completion (December 2025)

🔲 Assay results (January-February 2025).

Normally we would add in potential visuals while the drill program is ongoing, but BPM will be drilling with an RC rig which means visuals will be unlikely.

🎓See our educational article about the different types of drilling here: The Difference Between Aircore, RC and Diamond Drilling

What are the risks?

In the short term the key risk for BPM will be “exploration risk”.

BPM expects to start drilling before the end of this month.

Given there are historic drilling results on the project already, the market will likely build in expectations that BPM can at least replicate those results.

IF drilling fails to deliver any economic mineralisation OR extensions to the known gold mineralisation on its project the market could re-rate the stock lower.

Exploration risk

BPM is still a long way from a discovery, and even further from defining a resource.Just because AngloGold drilled a few holes back in the day, it doesn’t guarantee BPM will hit anything significant in its follow-up drilling. BPM is an early-stage exploration company, and could come up empty-handed.

Source: “What could go wrong” - BPM Investment Memo 21-Aug-2025

Other risks

Like any stock market investment, investing in BPM carries a range of risks which may affect the value of the company, some of which cannot be foreseen (this is the nature of risks).

Here we aim to identify a few more risks.

BPM’s primary asset is a pre-discovery gold exploration project and it is possible that BPM makes no economic resource discovery.

BPM is also highly sensitive to movements in the gold price. A sustained downturn could hurt the project’s potential value and limit BPM’s ability to raise funds for exploration.

As a small company with a market cap of ~$10M, BPM is highly speculative. Even after recent share price moves, the current valuation may already reflect some of the anticipated upside.

Like all junior explorers, BPM is reliant on capital markets to fund exploration. Any future capital raise could dilute existing shareholders.

Finally, while WA is one of the more stable mining jurisdictions globally, there are always regulatory, environmental, heritage and permitting risks that could delay or prevent project development.

Investors should carefully consider these risks and seek professional advice suited to their personal circumstances before investing.

Our BPM Investment Memo

You can read our BPM Investment Memo in the link below.

We use this memo to track the progress of all our Investments over time.

Our BPM Investment Memo covers:

• What does BPM do?
• The macro theme for BPM
• Our BPM Big Bet
• What we want to see BPM achieve
• Why we are Invested in BPM
• The key risks to our Investment Thesis
• Our Investment Plan