Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW) CEO Michael Hudson on $17 Million Financing: “In a Strong Position to Drill and Make Further Discoveries”

Gerardo Del Real: This is Gerardo Del Real with Resource Stock Digest. Joining me today is the Chairman and CEO of Mawson Resources (TSX: MAW)(OTC: MWSNF), Mr. Michael Hudson. Michael, how are you this morning?

Michael Hudson: Gerardo, top of the world.

Gerardo Del Real: I wanted to touch base. I appreciate you taking the time on such short notice. Of course, you announced a very, very robust $17 million Canadian public offering of units. You announced that just two days ago. I understand the interest was pretty overwhelming. I want to ask you about that in light of the recent market action and the trading. We always expect when there's a financing announced that people will sell and hopefully try to get a position in the financing. I just wanted to get your take and see how that was coming along and see if, frankly, you were having trouble raising the money.

Michael Hudson: Thanks, Gerardo. You always throw that little last bit of the question in. No, everything is in order and we're very confident. We've got a prospectus-driven raise here. It's a public offering. It's on the back of a prospectus, which creates a lot more formalities. 

This was announced last Thursday. It was then marketed by our bankers and the interest was enthusiastic to say the least, certainly the solidity of our Finnish story and the increasing resource base with the huge optionality that now we've got in Australian in the Victorian goldfields was recognized. The allocations and the interests were filled on Monday and that's why we made a press release with the $17 million raise. We put the pin in it there, and certainly there was a lot more interest beyond that. We're working towards closing that financing on Wednesday the 20th of May. So everything is in order. We've got a great institutionally-led raise that will be closing shortly.

Gerardo Del Real: I got to ask you, we spoke last time and we talked about the entry into Australia, the hottest gold address on the planet basically, and the success that Fosterville South had had. They have a market cap now of approximately $62 million and they're right next door in several cases to your land package in Australia. 

Now we actually have a peer that's just, frankly, knocked it out of the park with exploration here lately, Rupert Resources. I believe in the last few days, their stock is up something like 100% and they have a market cap well, well north of $240 or $250 million Canadian on the back of some incredible results.

What's clear to me is that there is an eagerness by the market to reward quality exploration that yields results. I don't have to remind everybody about how successful you've been in Finland. You've pioneered a lot of the exploration there. But can you speak to how exciting it is just for someone that has such an advanced project in that part of the world, to see that drilling success be rewarded? And of course, you know where I'm going. I'm going to ask you about the pending assays that we have for the project there.

Michael Hudson: We celebrate the success of our peers and Rupert are a very technically-led and rigorous and systematic explorer. We'd like to think that we're very much the same. They've been hard at it for the last year doing the basic data capture and their rigorous work has been rewarded not only by the drill string, but absolutely by the market.

The style of mineralization they're finding is different. They've got an old mining lease in an old mine that hosted gold in some volcanic rocks. The gold that they found is in sediments and a very similar analog to what we've been finding in Rajapalot. So this is a new style of mineralization that's really been opened up in Northern Sweden. Nothing like a great exploration hole to get the market excited. Right?

Gerardo Del Real: Absolutely. And to that end, how are assays looking on your end? I know that they are due, I got to imagine, within the next week or two?

Michael Hudson: Yeah, we've got assays rolling in as we speak. I can imagine post-closing this financing is when the rest of the assays will come from the laboratory and we can report the last 13 of 37 holes. So we've had a great set of results to date and we trust that continues. We're waiting with bated breath to receive those final assays.

There's at least another few press releases, I think, in the wind for the final assays from our 14-kilometer drill program that we finished over the last four or five weeks. The assays always lag the drilling of course. They will all feed into the updated resource that will have tripled the meters in from the initial resource we put out in December 2018. We've tripled the meters into that resource, and that will come around August.

Gerardo Del Real: I got to believe with this cash infusion – which is expected to close on or about May the 20th. Is that accurate Mike?

Michael Hudson: Precisely on May 20th it will close.

Gerardo Del Real: Excellent. I have to believe that that's hopefully going to lead to a pretty methodical but aggressive second half. Can you provide a little bit of context as to your approach now that you're going to have what by all accounts is a robust treasury for an explorer and developer. Right?

Michael Hudson: There's only one way to make discoveries and that's drill, Gerardo. Drilling only comes with having a healthy treasury. So this has increased our ability to make further discoveries and really the company's never been in a better position with cash that will be there next week. 

We'll have close to $19 million cash in hand. We've got fully permitted. We've got a growing resource base. We'll be working in the summer-permitted areas. We're going to be running big geophysical programs and then drilling, hopefully, on anomalies that are generated from those, only 500 meters along strike from the resource area over the next few months, next three or four months in Finland.

We'll be starting to collect the geophysical data again over our Australian projects and looking to drill them in the same sort of timeframe. And then working up to what is always the busiest time of the year from December onwards in Finland, where we'll put another 15 to 20 kilometers into these resource areas, expanding them. We've got two new areas that we've worked up this year also, beyond the three resource areas, so we'll be drilling five areas this winter with ferocity.

Gerardo Del Real: That's a lot of news flow. Mike, thank you so much again for coming on on such short notice. And I look forward to chatting as soon as this financing closes and we get those assays in.

Michael Hudson: Excellent. Thanks again, Gerardo.

Gerardo Del Real: Thank you.

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