Latest / Financial Survival Network / Unicorn Dolly Varden Silver: CapturesThe Attention Of Major Players -- Only 8% Public Float

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Unicorn Dolly Varden Silver: CapturesThe Attention Of Major Players -- Only 8% Public Float · Financial Survival Network

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Value creation is, in my opinion, is done through growing your mineral inventory
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or growing your production and if we can continue through low cost exploration to find
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more silver. And the way I look at a carry right now, the
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company's trading at about a dollar announce in the ground roughly okay, but you
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and I know, because we've been around some bull markets in the past,
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the average company, not just the good ones like Dolly Varden, but the
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average company will trade at three or four dollars announce in the ground. The
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Financial Survival Network now more than network, the Financial Survival Network. Welcome,
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this is Financial Survival Network. I'm your host, Carrie Leutz. We've got
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a new sponsor, Dolly Varden Silver, and the CEO Dolly Varden is with
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us now, Sean Coonkon. I've known Sean for years now, and I
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wanted to work with them for a long time, but the timing just was
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never right. But now Sean, it's a it seems to be a different
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world in our sector. Absolutely, Kerry, And like you know, it's
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been great getting to know your the last few years and really happy to be
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on today. Hey, so you know you've had so many challenges over the
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past few years, and yet Dolly Varden has really kind of performed, while
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others, many good companies, have really not been able to keep up with
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you No's. And I attribute that to a couple of things. You know,
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Look, I find that real primary sober minds are rare. They're only
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represent about twenty eight percent of the market, So we have something that's rare.
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But what makes our company unique is where it's located. So we're in
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Canada versus you know, in Mexico or Peru or Argentina are all wonderful jurisdictions,
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but I just think Canada is a place where you've got stable laws.
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You know, we celebrate all sorts of mining, whether it's open pit or
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underground. And really without the mining industry up here in the north, you
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know, there's not a lot going on outside of tourism, so we need
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mining. And so I think because we're a primary silver opportunity because of the
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location. And then the last thing is we've demonstrated some size through an acquisition
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and through discoveries, which has led to a lot of pretty notable shareholders,
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including HECLA, including Eric Sprat, including institutions like Fidelity, and I think
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because of those doctors, Like we've been in a market carry where you've had
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to be in a bit of a unicorn to stay afloat and to appreciate and
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Daaly has demonstrated some very very very special things, very very special results that's
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led to us doing all right during the bear market. And my experiences for
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those companies who do well during your bear market, your leaders when the market
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turns on, and that's what we're seeing today. Absolutely. Yeah. And
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I remember when you made the Homestake acquisition and it was like seeing a missing
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puzzle piece go into your whole land package. And now the results drill results
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initially been stellar. Yeah, you know what, I never dreamed that the
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numbers were getting at a Homestake would be what they are like you know if
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And it's important because I'm a new company to your audience, so it's important
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to understand the history here. So I'll just give you a little bit of
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background. So this project has got one hundred year history, and what we've
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done is we've put an entire package together. It's it's never happened in the
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past, and so you know, we've had situations like there's been glaciers that
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have been receding infrastructure has now gone into the area and we're making new discoveries.
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But by bringing Homesteak and Dolly together, it gave us the critical mass
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and the results were getting up there. You know, we're drilling high grade
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gold and high grade silver over some really big bulk minable wits. Yeah,
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I saw, you know, it popped out on the screen and I had
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to look twice. My eyes aren't as good as they used to be.
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Seventy nine nearly seventy nine and a half grams per ton equivalent gold equivalent over
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twelve and a half meters. I mean, that's the stuff of legends.
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No, that was actually just a straight up gold number. That's seventy nine
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grams was just pure gold. And one thing I want to tell your audience,
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like, I was born and raised in Vancouver, BC. And so
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this area that we called the Golden Triangle is just northwest of Vancouver, and
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this is an area that if you go back to the nineteen twenties, there
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was a mine called the Premier Mine, and the Premier Mind started as a
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sober mine. And the difference between silver and gold is gold has a higher
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melting temperature, so in the Golden Triangle. Whether it's the Premier Mind which
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now Ascot is turning back into production, or the famous Eski Creek mine which
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is in Schena, or Bruce Jack which is in Neumont. They all started
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as silver deposits. But as the explorers vectored into that heat source, that
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higher melting temperature metal, the gold. What was a high grade silver opportunity
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became known as a big gold deposit. And you and I were joking before
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we hit record, you know, are we going to have to change our
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name. It wouldn't be the worst thing in the world if if we found
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a big gold deposit on this, you know, in this historic silver complex.
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But go ahead again. I'm history buff, and I think whether you're
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talking about financial markets and understanding golden silver's role in history, or you're talking
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about for me, I'm fascinated by the history of mining. This was this
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project. Dahley Varden was the richest silver mine in the British Empire when it
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was in production in nineteen twenty. It was Canada's third largest silver producer throughout
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the nineteen fifties. So what I inherited was an incredible rich mineral history.
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And then like I said, with the infrastructure, with the glaciers, with
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treating, and with the metal prices doing what they are today, it's very
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very economic to eventual these projects today. Now you've been blessed by the weather
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gods. Very little snow this winter. Not great if you're in the ski
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resort business, but great for mining. So on the back of these really
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nomenal results, you get to start the program earlier this year. Are you
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going to go further out? What's the plan going ahead? That's a great
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question. So this month we send a team to the field and it's the
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earliest start in the company's you know, one hundred year history, and so
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we will have drills turning. We'll have three drills turning in less than a
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month. But the team will move up this month. We'll get all the
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equipment, we get all the you know, ground truthing, getting all the
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vectoring. In the strategy this year is look, we're a company that's now
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demonstrated we have a lot of solver and gold in the ground. You know,
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there's something like, you know, on a heads up basis, sixty
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three sixty four million ounces of silver and a million ounces of gold. And
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you know, if you took the current you know, eighty to one sober
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to gold ratio, and you expressed it in a silver equivalent. You're talking
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about, you know, just under one hundred and fifty million ounces of solver
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equivalent. Now, Carrie, that number is out of eight because we've done
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a lot of drilling since our last resource estimate. So some are speculating that
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maybe the company is pushing a much higher number, uh, because we have
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put about forty million dollars in the ground and drilling and we've made some wonderful
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new discoveries. The strategy, you know, some people are saying to be
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sean, like don't you have enough? Like if you've got close to two
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hundred million ounces of silver, that's ten million ounce is a sober production on
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an annual basis for the next two decades, Like just wrap a ball on
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it and develop it now. But the question that I have is, you
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know, value creation is in my opinion, is done through growing your mineral
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inventory or growing your production. And if we can continue through low cost exploration
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to find more silver. And the way I look at a carry right now,
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the company's trading at about a dollar announce in the ground roughly Okay,
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but you and I know, because we've been around some bowl markets in the
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past, the average company, not not just the good ones like Dolly Varden,
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but the average company will trade it three or four dollars announce in the
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ground. Right, So if I can find more silver for pennies, announce
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in the ground, and we're going to be revalued at dollars announced in the
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ground. The strategy this year is to continue to grow mineral inventory, and
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there's and there's the kind of a twofold plan to that, going into the
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areas that we know are either past producing minds or their compliant deposits, and
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expanding and extending those known areas, which is just stepping out into areas that
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are open and trying to expand the mineralization through drilling. And then the other
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part of that is taking a step back looking at all the all the modern
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science that we have at our figuretips, the geophysics, the geochemistry, the
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geology, and saying, you know, there's a perodicity, there's a repeating
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pattern on the project, and the question is, you know, where could
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we triangulate based on all this data? You know, and you know we're
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using AI. You know we're using most cutting edge technology and good old fashioned
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geology and ground truth thing. And we've got people in the team. I've
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met with two young geologists that are still in school, you know, that
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are twenty all the way up to members of the team that I won't tell
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you how they are, but they're not twenty and so great a lot of
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great to hear. And it's that mentoring and it's incredible where the discoveries come
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from. Like we had a young geologist, Amanda Bennett, she was thirty.
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She came and worked for us, and she was the one that sort
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of cracked the code and made a big discovery. And then we add Andrew
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Hamilton, who is who's not thirty anymore, who you know, drilled a
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ninety three meter hole Carrie ninety three meters of three hundred and fifty seven grams
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of silver equivalent, Like it was two hundred and twelve grams of silver almost
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two gram gold over almost one hundred meters. And so you know, we've
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got Amanda the geologist making some big discoveries at the wolf deposit. We've got
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Andrew Hamilton, who's you know, enhancing the Homestake silver deposit, and mentoring
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Amanda, and then our VPX and this is the key. This is the
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key, our VPX, Rob ben Egmont. Who if I had to give
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a game ball to somebody in the organization who has made the biggest difference,
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it's it's our It's our VPX, Rob ben Egmont. He stepped out in
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that hole that you cited. The eighty grams of gold over twelve meters,
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brand new zone, brand new discovery. One of the highest grade drill intercepts
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the project has ever seen. That was his doing. And it takes that
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team approach where you have a group that's got the chemistry and they've and the
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shareholders like Heckla, like Eric, like the institutions have given them the money,
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and then you've got a prospective area. It leads to what you need.
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And it's an exciting time for us at Dolly Varden because this is a
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binary business. You either have it or you don't. And when you have
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it, you know, I've been doing this for twenty years, so I
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have an appreciation that I've only had one other situation like this in my career,
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and it's the equivalent of being on a championship team. And it's special
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and that's why it's important to partner with people like yourself to get that message
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out to the world, to say, hey, this isn't just some old
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mind that used to work. We're bringing and breathing new life into it.
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And now we've got to market and it's leading to what I think is going
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to be a very very successful conclusion to this business. Wholeheartedly agree. I
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mean, I watched raise money in the worst market that I personally have ever
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seen in my life. I mean, everybody has money, but nobody wants
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to give it to you now. And yet you know, you had a
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recent fifteen million dollar raise several before that. It seems like the belief in
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you and the confidence in the projects really it's surprising. Well, listen,
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I work with what I would say for Junior Mining, are the most incredibly
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talented investment bankers on the planet. You know, people like Jeff Sickerman,
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Jeff Crane, Kevin Campbell. It's there, it's the it's the investor's confidence
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in them bringing them a vetted project that they've been phenomenal partners. So you
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know, it's really the team that you know, from the board level to
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the shareholders to even those investment banking consultants that you know, it's we've been
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you know, sometimes they say you've ought to be lucky. Touching on that,
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I assume that recently there's been heightened institutional interest in Dolly Varden as well
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as interest from the majors. I know you're limited what you can talk about
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there, but just give us an indication of the sentiment of the big players,
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the institutions and the majors. So look, I think it's really interesting
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because I was looking at a chart from about ten years ago that looked at
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managed institutional money, whether it was in the UK or North America for mining,
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and there is a fraction a fraction of the money today that there was
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like maybe one tenth and so one of the things that I think we have
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done well in our in our office is being able to go out and tap
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non traditional institutional money, right Like, I spend a lot of time on
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the road, you know, going to places like Germany, Switzerland, throughout
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the United States talking to people. And the reason I say Germany is Germany
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is a country in the modern world that understands gold's role in devaluation, you
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know, and you know, going back after the First World War, with
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the Weimar Republic. So it's you know, it was never taught to me
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here in school in North America. You know gold's role, right, you
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know, I'm forty three years old, and you know when I went to
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school, it was never taught. However, you know, my parents came
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over from India and they came up with some with some gold, and I
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for years, Carrie, I thought they were crazy. I thought, what
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are they doing. They're they're exchanging their hard earned, hard saved dollars for
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gold. And it wasn't until I started to meet people like yourself and people
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like Rick Rule and started listening to people that had an understanding and appreciation for
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the pressure metals and the role that they've played over the last five thousand years
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that I woke up to what real money is. And so in terms like
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we've had to be non traditional in our approach. But in the last week
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or so, I'm starting to get some inbound calls from institutions. I had
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one institutional fund manager called me last week and he was able to increase his
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funds assets under management by thirty percent. And he's a large manager, and
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so there is a lot of money and I don't know, if it carry
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if it's money that's on the sidelines, or if it's money that's rolling over
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from other sectors. But there's there seems to be the shift into metals,
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battery metals, you know, the precious metals, and so there is,
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there is, and so what I'm seeing out there totally is financings that were
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struggling. You know, the little company that was trying to raise the two
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million is now completing a six million dollar transaction. For me, it's it's
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never been about trying to raise money. It's been more about trying to raise
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the right money, like and so and so thoughtfully explaining to the investor saying,
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Okay, look it's going to take me this long for my business plan.
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You know. It was about matching money with duration, and it was
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about saying, can you give me a chance to build a business. And
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in the case of Hacklaw, Hecklo owns fifteen percent of the company. They're
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the fastest growing established silver producer in the world. They want the metal.
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So having a partner like that, who's looking at is Dully Varden the next
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pipeline project? Is it the next greens Creek Or having a guy like Eric
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Spratt, who is you know, you know Eric doesn't need to sell shares
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to make a mortgage payment, right is he can add he also has a
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belief that silver's going to three hundred dollars now, so he's going he's going
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shaw on him in your corner. And I got your back. And you
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know, he led our last financing and went over ten percent. So I've
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been blessed that I've had people like Eric, like Phil Baker at Heckla,
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trust the team that I built and the asset, and like I said,
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we've been very lucky with some droll results, and we've got to work very
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very hard. But you know, it's nice that we're now being rewarded in
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the market, beginning to be rewarded. And it just when I think of
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the institutions and the majors not snapping up this company at a lower price.
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Obviously now it would be a substantial premium to market. But it reminds me
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I built a house in New York and I bought this piece of property and
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my next door neighbor hated my house and he said, you know, I
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could have bought that property for sixty thousand, and you paid six times that
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and you know, why didn't I do it? Why did I buy it?
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Then I would have to look at your house, And this is exactly
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the same thing. These institutions are going to be looking back, chicking themselves
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for not having bought these companies up these projects on the cheap when the opportunity
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was there. And you know, why are they going to wise up?
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I don't know the answer to that, but obviously projects like Dolly Varden's becoming
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increasingly harder to find rarer. You can find them in jurisdictions, but they
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don't want you to drill, they don't want you to change anything, or
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the locals are vehemently opposed to mining because of past transgressions. I just see
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what's happening. And if Eric Sprout is even close to three hundred dollars and
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ounce, all of these people are going to be these geniuses kicking themselves for
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not having taken the opportunity when it was there. And it's still there,
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maybe not as good as three months ago, but the opportunity still exists now
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one hundred percent. Now. The good news for the larger companies is,
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you know, their share prices are moving higher too, and you know,
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so it's on a relative basis if they're issuing shares to acquire you know.
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But I agree with you, and that's why four years ago I came into
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Deli Martin because I thought, you know, this is an opportunity and where
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I've studied one hundred silver projects in the last four years. And when I
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see study them, I mean gone in with a team of engineers and geologists
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and finance professionals. And the one thing that I've come away from is silver.
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The projects that are out there, they're deep and they're narrow, and
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I think our greatest differentiator is we've got a or body that's amenable to bulk
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mining, and that is a differentiator. The other thing is it's the grade
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of your body and the fact that the ore body goes to surface. I
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think those three factors make this a special opportunity. And there's it's not a
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coincidence that all of these smart, renowned precious metals companies or investors have come
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here. Like only eight percent of the company is held by the public.
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And so I know why now after studying it as hard as I have for
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the four years, and silver the twenty years in precious metals, Like I
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said, it's a binary business. The best projects get developed first, and
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then you have to go further afield and you have to go the low hanging
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fruit's been picked because this is in the north, and this is like I
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was listening to Doug Casey about eight years ago, and I, you know,
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my kids were a lot younger than they are today. They were just
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you know, ones coming out of diapers at the time. And I heard
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Doug Casey say, you've got to go, like go to Africa. Who
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over the opportunity is. And I thought, I looked at my wife,
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and I looked at my at the time, you know, four year old
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and my six year old, and I thought, you know what, I'm
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going to go north. We can no longer go west, right, So
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I was like, let's go north. And I got really lucky that the
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government. You know, there's that old Kevin Costner movie Field of Dreams that
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if you build it, they will come. And that's what the BC government
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did. The BC government put in the roads, they put in the power,
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they upgraded the deep water seaport, and they made it possible for a
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little company like Gully Varden to go out and do some low cost exploration and
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it's incredible. It's incredible what's happened in the last four years. Not to
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mention the current metals prices today, we're speaking of gold broke twenty four one
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hundred, it hit twenty four fifty, silver close to thirty. They both
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pulled back a little bit, to be expected in light of the run ups
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that have happened. But that changes the economics of everything, doesn't it.
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Shot Well, I ran into Phil Baker and it was last Friday. We
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could go today, and the silver price was twenty seven dollars. You know,
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I think it traded through twenty nine today, but it had just gone
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from a lower twenty three earlier in the month to a high twenty seven.
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And I asked Phil how that impacted his production and and he said that that
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four dollars move in silver from twenty three to twenty seven was the difference of
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seventy five million dollars of free cash fow. And if you just think of
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like if you think a hat Clop and you think of their production profile,
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that's one company in the space, and that's a four dollar move. That's
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how highly levered these things are to the metal price is. And if we
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got another four dollars move and another four dollar move. And you know when
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when you know, around the time I was born, the price is Solver
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was fifty dollars an ounce. I remember those days I was. I was
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a teenager then, but I remember it. And this is where, Terry,
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this is where what led me to this opportunity was I was working on
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a gold project for six and a half years. You know, we had
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we had built a gold mining company and it took everything in us, right.
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We went from inception to a one point four billion dollar market cap,
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and you know, we needed the price of goal. We made a share
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older was a lot of money. Stock went from seven cents to five dollars.
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But we needed a lot of things to go right. You know,
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the gold price went from three hundred to two thousand. A lot of things
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went right, Kerry. I made more money speculating on silver stocks in six
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months that I building that gold mining company where we we had six hundred employees,
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and you know, all this stuff raised five hundred million dollars. Now,
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the lesson for me was silver outperformed gold, right, and so in
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that twenty eleven run up, I thought to myself, if we get into
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another gold market. I need to go heavy in the silver. And that's
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why, you know, when I was getting convinced, because in twenty fifteen
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Goal bottom one thousand, and we saw it run up to fourteen hundred there
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in twenty sixteen, I started wrapping my head around a key. I think
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we're in the early days of a bottoming process and it might take multi years,
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but I need to get silver. And that's where I was, you
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know, I looked at all these different projects throughout the world, came across
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Dolly Varden, and I think for my investors who followed me here, I
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think we're going to it's going to be highly levered to the price of Goal
25:56
to move here. And I think, you know, silver has historically outperformed.
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It lags and then it it outperforms, and I think we're setting up
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for that type of a moment. And the good news is even with the
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gold price going to twenty to twenty four to fifty today, silver at twenty
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nine dollars is around a eighty five to one ratio. Like that ratio,
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Carrie, we're mining. For every seven ounces of silver we're mining, we're
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mining one ounce of gold. So that's the relationship from a mining perspective,
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from what's the natural relationship in the earth cruss, it's one to fifteen.
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Historically it's been you know, depending on how how you want to you know
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what he wants. On five thousand years, it's been fifteen to twenty to
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one. Last one hundred years, maybe closer to fifty to one. It
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shouldn't be eighty five to one. No, no, agreed. And it's
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trading at the sixty percent of its all time high, whereas gold is making
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new eyes and it's an anomalous market and eventually it's going to right itself.
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Well, Sean, it's been great sitting down talking with you, getting your
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insights and your vision for the company. Really exciting times. I suggest you
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all go over to Dolly Vardensilver dot com sign up for notifications ticker symbols in
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the US d l l F and in Canada it's DV. Sean, We
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will definitely be talking to you again in the near future and be well.
27:26
Thanks for having me on Carrie the Financial Survival Network