PFE starts first ever drilling at its US antimony-silver project
Our US critical minerals Investment Pantera Minerals (ASX: PFE | OTCQB: PTMLF) just started drilling at its Arkansas antimony-silver project.
It is the first ever drilling at the project, which PFE picked up in late October last year.
(source)
The leases host historic silver and antimony mines, worked from shallow surface workings into the early 1900s, with no modern exploration since then.
Since acquiring the ground, PFE has been systematically sampling and mapping to define and rank drill targets across the project.
That work returned rock chips of up to 19.2% antimony and 63.8g/t silver, plus base metals including copper.
The ~10 hole, ~1,500m diamond program will test whether those grades continue at depth beneath three of the old mines, and it is underway now:
(source)
Drilling should take around six weeks, with assays reported as they come to hand.
Here are the areas being targeted with this drill program, this is the result of the sampling works undertaken prior to rank the drill targets:
(source)
We covered the upcoming drilling most recently here: PFE - maiden US antimony-silver drilling to start in August
Although PFE held only ~$520K in cash at 30 June, it has since received A$2M from last year's sale of its US lithium project to EnergyX, with another A$2M due in April 2027.
So this round of drilling is funded, with more cash to come.
PFE also holds ~A$42M worth of EnergyX shares, well above its ~$8.4M market cap, this valuation is based on the last round of funding that EnergyX completed..
It should be noted that EnergyX is a private company, so it isn’t easy for PFE to realise this value, while EnergyX is intending to list publicly there still isn’t a timeline on this which would explain why PFE trades at a discount.
We covered the latest on PFE's EnergyX holding here: PFE's ~A42M private investment receives US225M investment from $97BN Eni
What do we want to see PFE do next?
Updates on PFE’s EnergyX holding:
- ✅ A$2M deferred cash from the EnergyX sale - due July 2026. (source))
- 🔲 EnergyX IPO or trade sale (this one is a complete unknown in terms of timing)
Target Generation on US critical minerals project
We want to see PFE sample, map and run geophysics on its US asset to identify drill targets.
Here are the milestones we are tracking:
- ✅Mapping and sampling
- ✅ Drill targets confirmed
- ✅ Maiden drill program - Underway now, confirmed today (source)
- 🔄 Assays form the drilling - due in around 6 weeks
After PFE has identified priority drill targets, we want to see the company drill test the project.
