Brett Richards, CEO of Pasofino Gold Limited V EFRGF (FSE: N07), was recently a guest on Benzinga's All-Access.
Pasofino Gold is a Canada-based mineral exploration company. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary ARX Resources Limited, Pasafino owns 100% of the Dugbe Gold Project in Liberia.
The project is mineral-rich and in an ideal location, reports the company. Pasafino completed a bankable feasibility study that showed the project to be economically advantageous.
Pasofino Gold is a Canada-based mineral exploration company. Through its wholly-owned subsidiary ARX Resources Limited, Pasafino owns 100% of the Dugbe Gold Project in Liberia.
The project is mineral-rich and in an ideal location, reports the company. Pasafino completed a bankable feasibility study that showed the project to be economically advantageous.
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NewsTranscript
00:00Welcome into AXS, Brett.
00:06Let me just once again welcome you in.
00:08He's obviously the CEO of Pacifino Gold Limited.
00:11The TSXV ticker is VEIN.
00:14The OTCQB ticker is EFRGF.
00:18And the FSC ticker is N07.
00:20So it's great to have you.
00:22And let's just start off here.
00:23Can you give everyone an overview of Pacifino Gold?
00:27Yeah, thanks, Dan.
00:28Pacifino has probably been flying under the radar
00:32for a number of years.
00:33And what we have is we have the Dugbe Gold Project
00:38in Liberia, in West Africa.
00:40And it has gone through a full feasibility study.
00:45And we are at the next stage of development,
00:48i.e. looking for a strategic partner
00:51to help further develop the project
00:53or looking for a strategic partner
00:55to take an off-ramp with.
00:57So lots of exciting stuff going on.
01:00And yeah, happy to walk you through
01:02some of the more detailed information about the project.
01:05Yeah, and I love when companies can fly under the radar
01:08and all of a sudden they can take over the world.
01:09So it's a good place to be.
01:11And then you can jump out and do some great stuff.
01:13And what does make Liberia, you know,
01:15an ideal location for gold mining?
01:18Are there any regulatory challenges
01:20you're facing in Liberia?
01:22Well, Dan, I've worked in West Africa
01:25probably 10 of the last 15 years of my career
01:30with the exception of Goldshore Resources.
01:33And, you know, I've worked in some
01:35really difficult jurisdictions, Burkina Faso,
01:38Mali, Guinea, Sierra Leone, and also Liberia.
01:44What I find about Liberia is a few things.
01:47First of all, it has a tremendous American-U.S. influence.
01:51It uses American money, speaks English,
01:54and, you know, through the whole history
01:56of colonization, et cetera.
01:58But it is a very, very stable jurisdiction
02:02with a strong mining-focused government.
02:06It's one of their leading GDPs.
02:08And at the end of the day,
02:11if I had to choose a country to be in today in West Africa,
02:15Liberia is probably the top of the list for me.
02:19I love it.
02:20I know you just completed a BFS,
02:22a bankable feasibility study in 2022.
02:26Help our audience understand, Brett, if you will,
02:28what a BFS is and what you're revealing,
02:31and also what effect, you know, moving to the price of gold
02:34they've had on the results of the study itself.
02:37Sure.
02:38This comes on the back of a lot of history.
02:41First of all, the project was owned by ARX Resources
02:46some time ago.
02:47They did about 20,000 meters of drilling.
02:50Hummingbird Resources, a public listed for now,
02:54a company in London,
02:57they did about 150,000 meters of drilling
02:59and conducted the full feasibility study
03:02that completed in June of 2022.
03:06What that is, at the time,
03:08it was a very detailed project analysis
03:12from mining, metallurgy processing, permitting,
03:15all of the key components of a project.
03:20They were...
03:22It took about a year to do,
03:24but that project came together
03:26and put out the economic outputs
03:29for the market we were in
03:31or the gold environment we were in,
03:33but also all the state of inflation at that point in time.
03:38And, you know, it's a study
03:40that is plus or minus 10% to kind of reality.
03:43So it has illustrated to us that, you know,
03:48Duke Bay is extremely economic.
03:51It's got low capex, reasonably speaking,
03:54for the size of production profile it has,
03:56and it has a really, really low cost structure.
03:59So the economics of this are really strong.
04:02I love it.
04:03Let's talk about the project.
04:04I want to know how...
04:05Tell us how you power the project
04:07and what's the power generation split
04:08between solar and LNG
04:11and what are the economics of each?
04:13Yeah, so I'll back up a little bit
04:15and just really talk about, you know,
04:18how we arrived at this
04:20because at the time, oil prices were quite high,
04:23much higher, almost twice...
04:24You know, not twice as much,
04:25but about 50, 60% higher than they are today.
04:28And LNG ended up being,
04:30I will say, the power solution
04:34that, you know, was most economic
04:37and augmented by solar,
04:39which for about 20% of the power requirements.
04:43And collectively,
04:44that was the power solution they arrived on.
04:48And given this was done in kind of 2022,
04:51our capex was $435 million.
04:54If I sensitize that up today to inflation,
04:58it's around $450 million US.
05:02But all our sustaining costs are just over $1,000,
05:05$1,025 at $2,100 gold.
05:09So, you know, the power component,
05:12I would say,
05:13and it's one of the reasons we're looking
05:15for kind of a strategic partner,
05:17is there's a number of ways we think,
05:19I think, that we can reoptimize this project
05:23from a capital capex standpoint.
05:26Obviously, steel prices are much lower
05:27than they were two years ago.
05:29Right.
05:30Oil's much lower than it was two years ago.
05:32So I think we could do a refresh
05:34a really quick refresh
05:35to probably keep capex where it is today
05:39or possibly even lower it,
05:41but also increase our recoveries
05:43and increase the optimization of our mine
05:46to bring grade forward.
05:47So there's a number of things that we can do
05:49at the end of the day to make the economics
05:51even better than they are right now.
05:53No, that's very, it's a good place to be.
05:55And let's talk about your leadership team
05:57and what kind of experience
05:59do you bring to the table with them?
06:01Yeah, I was attracted.
06:04I was attracted by Pasafino
06:07through a relationship I have with Dan Betts,
06:12who is our chairman.
06:13And Dan and I built a mine together.
06:15He built the Yenafalula mine in Mali in 2014,
06:18I was, or 2012, and I was building the Anatta mine
06:22for Avocet in Burkina Faso.
06:24So we got to know each other quite well.
06:26Dan reached out some time ago and said,
06:30would you be able to help us with this project?
06:31You've worked in Liberia,
06:33you know, West Africa,
06:35you're very familiar with building mines.
06:38Would you be interested in doing this?
06:39So I said, yes.
06:41And I said, you know, there's two or three paths here.
06:44We can bring in a joint venture partner.
06:48We can take an exit and take a win for our shareholders.
06:51That's always the, you know, an option
06:54we need to be looking at.
06:55But also I can build this mine
06:58and the economics are so robust.
07:00I'm very confident we can finance it,
07:03but we would need an equity partner
07:04to come in to start that process.
07:06But my relationship with Dan,
07:08who's the chairman, goes back 20 years.
07:10Steve Detels, who is our deputy chairman,
07:12is, you know, a strong businessman.
07:14Bob Metcalfe.
07:15There's some really strong people on our board
07:17who I've known for some time.
07:19And we have a very strong CFO in Lincoln Greenwich.
07:21And so our team was very tight,
07:25very small and very efficient.
07:27And if we decide that we're going to
07:29kind of increase our scope and look to build this,
07:33we'll obviously start to put together a project team
07:36and a deeper management team to facilitate that.
07:40But I've done that.
07:41I've built three mines in my career in West Africa
07:44and one in Congo.
07:45And this is what I wake up in the morning for.
07:49I love it.
07:49Nothing like having huge and great experience,
07:52you know, to make things as good as they can be.
07:53And, you know, will you, Brent,
07:54talk to us about the valuation gap in your stock right now.
07:57Why is your stock trading
07:58at such a lower multiple of gold reserves
08:01compared with some similar size projects?
08:04Yeah, you know what?
08:05We've talked about this
08:07and I've talked about this many times
08:08kind of in the press.
08:09And, you know, we saw 2022-23
08:14when we had some geopolitical disruption in the Ukraine
08:18and some instability in the market.
08:20But we saw gold price continue to power up.
08:23The performance of gold price in 23 was sub 20%.
08:27It was 24.5% in 2024 on the US dollar.
08:32So, you know, gold has performed quite well.
08:36Gold equities, on the other hand,
08:38have not performed to the extent
08:41that the gold price has moved.
08:43So there's been a disconnect
08:46and that disconnect still exists
08:47between gold price and gold equities.
08:49We're seeing it.
08:51And quite frankly, you know,
08:53there isn't the influx of capital
08:55into the junior mining space globally
08:58to help prop up these projects
09:01and allow them to advance properly.
09:03If I look at valuations from a resource,
09:06M&I or reserve basis, you know,
09:08Pasafino and looking at transaction comps as well,
09:12like Tieto Minerals or Asino in Namibia,
09:18and there are others.
09:20So when we look at that, you know,
09:22Pasafino could easily be trading at 150
09:27to $200 million market cap.
09:29We're trading at 50 today, sub 50,
09:31and we have no liquidity.
09:33So my job is to get out there and tell the story
09:37and get people into this project and into the stock
09:41simply because I see tremendous opportunity.
09:44I was brought in as an investor first.
09:46I have just under a million dollars of my own money
09:48invested in this company because I believe in it.
09:51And the companies that I've run historically
09:53and the market will know and people will know,
09:56I invest heavily in those projects that I work with,
10:00work on, are board members of,
10:03and I commit and quite frankly,
10:07Gold Shore Resources as we've talked about in the past
10:10and Midnight Sun Mining as we've talked about in the past,
10:13those are two really good examples of projects
10:15that when I get involved, I get committed
10:18and I am committed to Pasafino
10:20because I see the opportunity here.
10:22And I understand the risk better
10:24than most people do in West Africa
10:26because West Africa has morphed into something
10:28a little different than it was 10 years ago.
10:31And we have difficulties in Burkina and Mali and Niger,
10:34and we read about those difficulties all the time.
10:37But Liberia kind of comes to the forefront
10:40as very mining friendly, very doable.
10:43And this is a project I think is gonna see production
10:46within the next three years.
10:48And I love it.
10:48It was your wealth of experience.
10:49You definitely bring a lot of gravitas to Pasafino Gold
10:52and all the things you're involved with, as you mentioned.
10:53It was an absolute pleasure talking with you today, Brett.
10:56Thank you so much for your time
10:57and I wish you the best going forward.