Aurum Resources Limited (ASX:AUE)
Australia flag Australia · Delayed Price · Currency is AUD
0.6700
+0.0200 (3.08%)
May 11, 2026, 4:10 PM AEST
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RIU Explorers Conference 2026

Feb 17, 2026

Moderator

Our next company on stage is working very hard to increase the size and confidence of its current resource. They are well-funded to do so. Let's welcome Mark Strizek to the stage to find out how Aurum Resources intend to deliver on all these targets they've set themselves in 2026. Please make him welcome.

Mark Strizek
Executive Director, Aurum Resources

Okay, thanks very much. And it's great to be able to be here to talk about Aurum. I guess our goals are very simple. We're looking not just to build a gold mine, we're looking to build a gold mining company. We see within our current portfolio the ability, potentially within five years or so, to have two mines up and running, so. And our goal is to be a West African major. So that's the team there. We've, you know, done this before. There's a disclaimer. Hopefully, you like what you hear. So yeah, we're a little bit different than most of our peers in that we run our own diamond drill rig. So we've got currently, I had a look just before I came on stage, we've drilled over 200,000 meters of diamond.

We've been able to leverage some of the work of others, definitely. But we can bring to it an incredible scale, and I guess it's what I'd like you to remember before when you walk away, 'cause there's so many good stories you're hearing today, is that Aurum has scale, both in drilling capacity, but also in the exploration potential. You know, we've only really just scratched the surface. This is not our first rodeo. We've done this before. So Caigen Wang, the MD, is currently in China, so if anyone says it, Gongxi Fa Cai out there. But he is incredibly diligent, being able to pull together a team, and we've got a lot of the core people from Tietto. So we took that from discovery through to being bought out for around about AUD 800 million.

So that was Tietto. So we've got that record of execution. We also understand how important it is. Currently, we're not generating cash flow, so speed is critically important, 'cause, I guess when you're looking at your investment, if we're costing money, whatever we can do to shortcut that time. We've been able also to take what was a very fragmented package and join it together, and definitely our drilling is there. So it does give us, as I say, an unfair advantage. Probably just harping on it again, but you know, we've drilled 200,000 meters.

To do that at an average cost of 225, which is a contract cost, that's nearly $45 million, we've been able to do it for $9 million, and that's the most, the largest cost for explorationists, and it's probably the thing that most people are takers on prices, and everyone would love to drill so much more. Instead of dreaming about it, we did something about it, and you know, this really gives us an incredible opportunity. So just jumping to the next slide, we've got a relatively, I think the key takeaway is just how incredible the value proposition is here. Enterprise value is very modest when you think about we're a company with 3.3 million ounces, an incredible opportunity to grow that.

In terms of EV per ounce, it's around about 75 AUD, somewhere in thereabouts. Nearly all of the team that's on the page has done this before with Tietto. We've also recently announced Richard Simpson as chair, and he's got deep equity market experience. Major shareholders, the board and management, we're incentivized 11%. We are shareholders. Corporate institutions, around 45%. Got some big guys in there, Montage and also Zhaojin, who bought Tietto. Top 50 holds about 70% of the company. So drilling down where we are, and I think, as we're talking today to people that have never heard the story, you look at how much ground that we actually hold. So we've got a strategic stranglehold on this area.

We've taken a fragmented package, and we've been able to pull it together. We've discovered 2.4 million ounces. We really think that the scale is at Boundiali to go beyond that, and we also acquired another project called Mako, and hopefully we get some time to talk about that. There's more there. But the exploration upside is quite incredible. So just looking there, some of our neighbors, you've got Atlantic, you've got Montage to the south. That's a $4 billion company that hasn't even poured a gold bar yet, and you've got Perseus Sissingué, which is running out of ore to the north. So we've been able to take this package, and, you know, grow it into a coherent package. We've got.

Ground previously was held by you had Tur- I mean, Turaco, that was Predictive, and then we also, we had Barrick to the side of us. So we've got the key components here. We've got mining license applications on ground. We started the environmental work in April last year, and if y ou would have seen from Resolute with Doropo. Côte d'Ivoire is a country that is very welcoming, and we know this from our first experience. You can get projects built and approved very, very quickly. So 100,000 meters of drilling. We've done 200,000 meters to date. We've spent around about AUD 40 million. We've still got just on December, we had AUD 40 million.

Lots and lots of real estate, lots of targets to go after. What we've done so far are really the low-hanging fruit. It was targets that might have had a small amount of drilling or some soil anomalies, but really, we've only gone after the targets that were very easily identified. We've grown Boundiali to around about 1.1 million ounces from three deposits. There's another four or so that have been defined within this corridor, and as we keep working away, we think that there's definitely a lot more to come from this. In terms of how a development would be, it would be a hub-and-spoke model, so a central processing facility feeding into the you know feeding stock from deposits that are located around there.

We've also seen some good hits in terms of higher grades that could generate early cash flow. We've got roughly about 1 million ounces or so currently in indicated. That 2.4, the balance is inferred. We've got a resource update that is coming, you know, this quarter. It's imminent that we'll see, you know, I think some substantial uplift both in quantity and quality. So very simple mining, big, broad zones of mineralization. You've got 60 or so meters of oxide at surface that could be, you know, free dig. We just need to do the work and have got a PFS, which is coming at the end, well, on the end of this quarter as well, which will start putting some dollar and cents around it.

The BM project, we've discovered just on 1 million. This one didn't have any drilling on it, so this has come from soils and geochem and artisanal workings. We've grown it very quickly to just under 1 million ounces. It's 75 k. There's still around about 5 k of has been drilled, probably 57 k of mineralization to still go after. Some of the slides there just showing some of those high grades at surface, and then BST, which is down to the south. So this is owned 100% by us, the other's around 80%. So we're working towards a PFS. We've done some early preliminary work. The gravity recovery looks to be quite high. I guess it's the key message, it looks to be very simple CIL.

From our mines and our target, we're looking somewhere between 5 million-6 million tons to give us something that's gonna generate meaningful amounts of ounces and cash. Napié was an opportunistic takeover, so the Tietto team took over in December 2023. Not only have we discovered 2.4 million ounces, grown the company, we also acquired Napié for around about AUD 18 million or so for scrip. There's probably around about AUD 40 million-AUD 50 million has been spent on it. I think there's some low-hanging fruit there. We see incredible opportunity to grow beyond that 870,000 ounces. The key takeaway is the drilling is just too shallow. 93% of the resource is 150 meters.

If I just show you the slide, you can see, and this is the key for so many companies, that cash is so tight, you just can't drill and explore these projects as you should. That's where our diamond drilling gives us an incredible advantage. So we'll see another resource update coming out on this one, and, you know, it'll be, currently it's simmering along, but there's plenty of opportunity for growth as part of that two-mine plan that we have. A little cross-section, again, just demonstrating how shallow it is. So that's obviously Abujar. You know, the key is we make we wanna make sure that we bring all of the community with us. So things to look out for, I mean, hopefully, you remember about our drill capacity, the ability to do it for a cost that others can only dream about.

2.4 million ounces with incredible scale opportunity. So just running off the, the catalyst this year, we're looking at a resource update at Boundiali, another resource update at Napié, so lifting that over that to 870,000 ounces. A PFS at Boundiali, so cementing some dollars and cents, what this, this could be worth, so this will be the first one. Environmental approval, mining license, and another DFS and another resource model at the end, in the second half of this year. So these are very ambitious goals and incredible value catalysts for you to look forward to. So thank you very much for your time today. I think I've got my 12 seconds left to go. Thank you.

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