Petite virée québécoise de Will Purcell ce matin:
The Burkina Faso of Howe Street, Vanadiumcorp Resources Inc. (VRB), has endured another coup. The company says that it has appointed Gilles Dupuis to be its chief executive officer, replacing Ian Mallory. Mr. Mallory had also been the company's chairman, but that is no longer the case, as he has left the company's board along with Pierre Alarie and Stephen Pearce. Replacing them are Andre Gauthier, Kathleen Miller and Kristien Davenport. Mr. Dupuis and Christian Paradis are apparently the only holdovers from what had been a six-man board, but which is now down to five.
Vanadiumcorp went through the change just last June, when a dissident shareholder, Craig Dalziel's Vancouver-based ATM Mining Corp., set out to have "three exceptional nominees" added to the company's board -- Mr. Alarie, Mr. Graham and Mr. Mallory. (Mr. Dalziel was apparently happy with three of the current directors, Mr. Dupuis, Mr. Paradis and Mr. Pearce, but quite unhappy with the company's former CEO, Paul McGuigan.)
The coups have been coming with increasing frequency since Adriaan Bakker deposed Patrick O'Brien and his crew in 2013. Mr. Bakker had a lengthy run, but he got the heave-ho early in 2021, with Mr. McGuigan taking over as CEO -- but with Mr. Mallory keeping a watchful eye from the chairman's office. The past decade has not been a happy one for shareholders of Vanadiumcorp, as they have endured two 1:10 rollbacks in the past three years, with the first coming in 2022 and the second last fall.
And so, it is over to you, Mr. Dupuis. He hit the ground promoting, lauding the "newly strengthened board and management team" as having a "valuable opportunity to enhance our initiatives in the production and international sale of vanadium electrolyte." Further, he cheered, Vanadiumcorp and its new crew are "poised to make significant progress in advancing our strategic mineral resource at Lac Dore" -- the company's long-running vanadium, iron and titanium promotion southeast of Chibougamau in north-central Quebec. Vanadiumcorp slid two cents to 12 cents on 41,000 shares today.
Dean Hanisch's Focus Graphite Inc. (FMS) rose one cent to 11 cents on 339,000 shares. The company has shipped ore from its Tetepisca project in Quebec to American Energy Technologies Co. in Illinois for processing and analysis. Focus cheers that it has "invested extensive time and resources into the mineral resource" at Tetepisca through nearly 15,000 metres of drilling across 74 holes. The effort included 27 definition holes completed along strike, and the results will be rolled into an updated resource estimate later this year.
The current estimate for Tetepisca, now approaching its third birthday, lists 59.3 million tonnes indicated at 10.61 per cent graphite, with another 14.9 million tonnes inferred at 11.06 per cent, a total of 7.9 million tonnes of graphite based on a base-case cut-off grade at 3.9 per cent. At a higher cut-off, say 10 per cent, the total tonnage drops to 33.4 million tonnes, but the grade climbs to about 15 per cent, crediting the deposit with five million higher-grade tonnes.
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