TTM hits high grade gold, more assays to come

Published 30-JAN-2025 14:12 P.M.

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Today our gold-silver-copper Investment Titan Minerals (ASX: TTM) reported a high grade gold drill hit from its Dynasty project in Ecuador, where TTM is seeking to quickly grow its gold-silver resource.

The highlight hit was from Iguana:

High-grade intercept: 15.5m @ 3.0 g/t Au & 22.8 g/t Ag from 89.1m downhole in IGDD24-027
Including 6.1m @ 4.0 g/t Au & 40.1 g/t Ag

TTM expects this drill hit to improve the grade in this area of the resource.

The company also logged an extensional hit:

Iguana East extension: 3.0m @ 4.9 g/t Au & 11.2 g/t Ag within 9.8m @ 1.6 g/t Au & 4.4 g/t Ag from 21.8m

Below are where these two results came from on a map of the project (resource in red, above drill hits circled):

After today’s results from Iguana East (the area on the right of the above map) TTM will now be focussing its exploration efforts elsewhere on the project, where we can start to see some of the significant potential for resource growth at Dynasty when we consider the larger project area:

The area in green above is called Cerro Verde and this is where we now can look ahead to ~5,400m of drilling and assays focused on extensional and infill targets.

Cerro Verde hosts the majority of Dynasty’s existing resource - so it’s a fertile area to go drilling in.

It’s also worth noting that Cerro Verde has been home to some excellent recent trenching results from November:

(Source)

We think the high-grade nature of the trench finds, especially a 2.1m @ ~32.0 g/t Au result, indicates significant potential for resource growth.

Other highlights included:

2.0m @ 7.3 g/t Au & 6.1 g/t Ag in CVC24-072
6.0m @ 1.8 g/t Au, 23.6 g/t Ag in CVC24-054

So it will be important for TTM to follow up these trenching results and it looks to us like the proposed drill holes at the project are doing just that.

(Read the Quick Take)

We also got an update on the copper project that TTM signed a JV with Gina Rinehart’s Hanrine for in today’s TTM announcement.

TTM says that:

“Hanrine are currently undertaking Milestone Two - by completing a 10,000m diamond drill program to earn an additional 25% interest. Further information and results from this drilling program, designed to test lateral and depth extensions to copper porphyry mineralisation at the Copper Ridge prospect, are to be announced as they are to hand.”

We are eagerly awaiting news on results here - particularly considering that the copper price continues to push upwards over the long term, driven by increasing demand from decarbonisation and electrification:

(Source)

Part of why Gina Rinehart’s Hanrine might be interested in TTM’s copper project is because of long term supply dynamics as well.

Over the last decade the resources from existing copper projects is depleting:

(Source)

This has led to a wave of consolidation across copper projects with billions of $ spent since 2013.

Last year this peaked with the BHP/Lundin Mining $4.1B acquisition of Filo Corp’s copper project:

(Source)

This consolidation is because it is becoming harder and harder to make new copper discoveries and there are less juniors out there conducting copper exploration.

Companies are going deeper and deeper to find new copper discoveries, they are much smaller and becoming less frequent:

All of this points to sustained market interest in copper, which we think should only improve the appeal of TTM’s copper exposure in its portfolio of assets in Ecuador.

How this news impact our TTM Investment Memo:

These results are significant for TTM's progress at the Dynasty Gold Project which is objective #1 from our TTM Investment Memo:

Objective #1: Upgrade Mineral Resource Estimate at Dynasty

We want to see TTM grow its existing 3.1M ounce gold and 22M ounce silver JORC resource at its Dynasty project.

Source: 29 May 2024 TTM Investment Memo