WINNIPEG – I just caught up with lithium consultant and Ontario geologist Judy Baker. She was at the Manitoba Mining Conference.
Judy Baker, as our Stockhouse and Ticker Trax audience knows, was the CEO who legitimized Canada Lithium (TSX: T.CLQ, Stock Forum) via a year-long effort to convince Japan’s Mitsui to test the company’s lithium carbonate from a Quebec project. As plain-speak Judy might say, she wasn’t “full of piss and vinegar” when she vowed to raise CLQ’s profile in Asia.
Ms. Baker has two fresh roles these days. She is a director at Nemaska Exploration (TSX: V.NMX, Stock Forum), an earnest Canada operator with lithium, copper and nickel properties. She is also a marketing consultant for American Lithium (OTC:BB: AMLM, Stock Forum), which is developing a lithium and boron property in Nevada.
“It’s 10-below and I can see Maine through the freaking snowflakes,” Judy told me. “But everyone here, they’re too busy at the rare earths booths to notice.”
I thought of Judy this week after having a warm California breakfast with two tungsten/tellurium mineral explorers from western Canada. The folks from British Columbia’s Golden Odyssey (TSX: V.GOE, Stock Forum) chose the big egg, bacon and potato dishes to my whole-wheat blubes (blueberry griddle cakes) just as Judy did almost two years ago … and at the same California café. See the Judy Baker lithium story that snared huge readership and lit up CLQ’s stock.
Judy Baker says Nemaska is “price cheap,” and CEO Guy Bourasa, whom I have met, “spends all of his time exploring out at Lac Levac and none a lot of it promoting.” The Saint James Bay operator is worth $21 million right now in the stock market.
The company Judy consults for is American Lithium. Judy is trying to recreate the Asia magic she worked for Canada Lithium. “Back then, when I was very tight with Mitsui (Japan trading house), I got to meet and deal with Japan Oil,” she says. Japan Oil is essentially a government agency that searches for resources, and I knew they were interested in boron, lithium, some of the rare earths.”
JOGMEC, the six-year-old Japan Oil, Gas & Metals National Corp., will be on site Dec. 14 to see Borate Hills in Nevada. That was Judy’s doing. JOGMEC essentially owns, or has the right to own, 40 percent of AMLM’s Borate Hills.
“So they have to spend $4 million to earn the 40 percent, but by the end of this drill program they will have been in for $1 million. By then, maybe around the time of the PDAC conference in March, we’ll know specific tonnages.”
Why Nevada? “It’s a good project, and the jurisdiction and the permitting are right. It’s very close (20 miles) from what I think is the only lithium mine actually producing in North America,” she says.
Judy Baker says she is just in as a consultant and owns no shares. Good thing, as AMLM on the OTC bulletin board has suffered massive stock losses in the past year. American Lithium is broad-brushed with a link to Vancouver promoter Robert Genovese of BG Capital. See Dow Jones article. Judy acknowledges she has no clue about American Lithium’s share structure or who owns the stock.
As for whether American Lithium is worth a go for investors, I’d have to say I do not know. Both AMLM and Nemaska are about the same market capitalization: low $20 million range. Both have their shovels in several rare or near-rare elements and not just lithium. Both have Judy Baker involved in some way. Only one, Nemaska, is traded in Canada. Advantage: Nemaska?
Cheap old farts
As for elemental companies whose stocks might be too cheap to fall, well, earlier this week, as discussed, I learned about tellurium (symbol Te) from Golden Odyssey’s Tyrone Docherty. The 50-year-old Canadian CEO is buying stock in their own company – a theme we have been exploring with another natural resources prospects in our Ticker Trax reports: for one, polymetallic Trueclaim Exploration (TSX: V.TRM, Stock Forum) of Sudbury, Ontario, and Arizona, USA. (See article.)
You see, I easily could have themed this article “Stocks Too Cheap To Decline.” Nemaska. Trueclaim. American Lithium. Golden Odyssey. I did have John Shanahan’s Revett Minerals (TSX: T.RVM, Stock Forum), the Montana silver and copper producer and prospector, on that cheap heap. But then Mr. Shanahan, yet another 50-something CEO, and his main guy, Doug Ward, had to go and fulfill all the promises they made to me after I visited the company’s properties in and near Troy, Montana. See those articles and subscriber reports via Stockhouse.
Oh, and dang if Mr. Shanahan & Co. didn’t go out and reverse split RVM stock to help qualify for a USA listing. So Revett, of which I own about $1,200 worth, is probably still cheap for a silver producer ... but not too cheap to experience the drag of gravity.
All of these promising companies run by a fresh crop of, what, 50-somethings. I like that. At a later time, I’ll go into why tellurium in the world of flash storage and solar panels is a must-have element these days.
For now, let me say that Golden Odyssey’s Deer Horn property in British Columbia is 60 square kilometers of what appear to be among the richest grades of element the quite rare element Te on record. (Deer Pond also has a Canada-compliant 43-101 report – 63,000 ounces gold and 2.2 million ounces silver. Tungsten (symbol W) on the property was first discovered in the mid-1940s.)
“When we get $10 million, I’ll be a mine in 18 months,” Mr. Docherty of Vancouver assures me and one of his 60-something consultants, Jim Simpson, over those big-egg-bacon-and-potato plates. “We are looking at $2.5 million of drilling next year.” Such exploratory drilling likely would occur on the main vein on the south, into a single quartz-sulfide vein that dips north.
But hey. It’s not the gold and the silver that intrigue me about Deer Pond. It’s that tellurium and tungsten. One privately circulated report from a Colorado geology consultancy, World Industrial Minerals – a report that is not regulatory compliant but completed by a geologist with 35 years of experience – estimates the tellurium at Deer Pond at 220 tons.
To sum up: base and rare elements are catching my attention these days, and not just lithium, tellurium, cobalt and tungsten. I’m looking at tantalum (symbol Ta) in Australia, too. If the resource is sizeable in terms of acreage and the company is run by a bunch of 50-something old (engineering) farts, well, I’m in. The only thing is, well, that Judy Baker is only in her 40s.
Note: Thom Calandra owns only one stock cited in this report: Revett Minerals.
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THOM CALANDRA of Ticker Trax helps his audience find value in a quagmire of investment choices. Thom was founding editor of MarketWatch, CBS MarketWatch and FT MarketWatch. He was the voice of Thom Calandra's StockWatch and The Calandra Report. Thom has been covering life-sciences and natural resources since 1988.
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