Hot cross buns, chocolate eggs and a decent bottle of Ray Jordan-recommended sparkling shiraz – nothing like the perfect Easter Sunday basket of goodies to celebrate this significant calendar milestone.
To completely abuse the Easter metaphor, milestones are also a great thing to celebrate for investors – look no further than two of the emerging stocks in the most sought-after resources categories on the ASX.
Core Lithium and Gold Road Resources provided early Easter cheer for investors this past week with the announcement of significant milestones in their respective journeys to deliver long-term, sustainable shareholder value.
Core (ASX: CXO) is at the start of the rewards journey. This is its first Easter as a producer of spodumene concentrate, allowing it to join that rare bread of ASX stocks actually generating cash from its lithium promise.
For all the lithium excitement across the ASX, most of it relates to wannabe producers which have a tough road ahead of them.
Core, meanwhile, has been hitting the all-weather, sealed road from its Finniss mine to the port of Darwin about 90km to the north to stockpile spodumene concentrate ready for the first shipment to foundation customer Sichuan Yahua.
The first two parcels of spodumene concentrate produced at Finniss – including the commissioning volume – will go to Yahua before a steady stream of shipments is sent to both Yahua and fellow foundation customer Ganfeng Lithium.
And this is where the rubber hits the road, again.
As Core informed shareholders on Wednesday, most of the payment for these first two parcels of high-quality 5.6% Li2O tonnes will be received this month, before the ship even arrives at Yahua’s port of destination.
Time to pop the shiraz.
Shareholders certainly did – they marked Core’s shares up 8 per cent to 87¢ on the news.
Gold Road (ASX: GOR) is four years ahead of Core in terms of delivering on its promise to develop a mine that can make money.
The company discovered the world-class Gruyere gold deposit, in WA’s north-eastern Goldfields 1000km from Perth, in 2013 before striking a 50-50 joint venture with South African giant Gold Fields to develop the mine.
The first gold pour was celebrated in June 2019 – on Wednesday, the same day Core said it was ready to start shipping spodumene concentrate to Yahua, Gold Road announced that Gruyere had delivered its one millionth ounce of gold.
The Perth Mint is pegging the Australian dollar gold price at $3023 an ounce so it is easy to work out what one million ounces of gold are worth.
Like Core, Gold Road is focused on sustainable shareholder value creation rather than milestones, though that does not mean celebrations should not be in order. Investor Insight’s resident sommelier would suggest a slightly chilled pinot to commemorate the first million ounces from Gruyere.
Gold Road told shareholders it expected Gruyere to reach the two-million-ounce milestone during 2025, reflecting the steady production ramp-up at this Tier 1 gold mining operation to sustainable levels around 350,000 ounces annually.
The miner also reaffirmed Gruyere’s mine life to 2032 and updated its three-year production outlook.
Shareholders welcomed this Easter basket of goodies by marking Gold Road up 4 per cent on the day to $1.805, trending into record-high territory.
The milestones delivered by Core and Gold Road this past week demonstrate an important criteria for sharemarket success – not every company that basks in the commodity of the moment can translate this hope into cashflow.
The Gold Road example also highlights the rewards genuine greenfields exploration success can deliver.
In the gold space, new discoveries are hard to come by so shareholder patience is required.
Among the next breed of explorers hoping to reward shareholders with a sizeable new gold deposit, BMG Resources (ASX: BMG) is worth keeping an eye on.
The WA-focused explorer has delivered some excellent hits at its Abercromby project, near Wiluna, while metallurgical test work confirmed the free-milling nature of the ore, resultant amenability to conventional carbon-in-leach processing and excellent recoveries.
All that is now required is a maiden gold resource, something BMG had told shareholders it is working towards.
Maybe it is time to put aside a bottle of liqueur muscat.
