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Includes acquisition of Yanfolila gold project
Hummingbird Resources, the multi-project gold company, has announced its unaudited financial results for the six months ended 30 November 2014.
Operational Highlights:
· Completed acquisition of Yanfolila gold project in Mali from Gold Fields Ltd (‘Gold Fields’) in July 2014
· Drilling results reported at the Yanfolila Project
· Appointment of Russell King as Non-Executive Chairman
· SENET appointed as engineering consultant at the Yanfolila Project in Mali
Financial Highlights for the period to 30 November 2014:
· Cash of US$10.3m at period end
· Placing to raise US$3m with Exploration Capital, part of the Sprott Group of Companies (TSX:SII)
· US$10m drawn down from Taurus Mining Finance Fund Bridge Facility
· Taurus agree to provide US$75m under a 5-year facility for the purpose of refinancing the Bridge Facility and financing the development costs for the Yanfolila Project in Mali
Post period Highlights:
· Resource upgrade delineated across starter pits at the Yanfolila Project in Mali
· Optimisation Study expected to be published imminently
CEO’s Statement:
It gives me great pleasure to report on Hummingbird’s progress as we look to build a leading next generation gold company in Africa. Our principles are to ‘produce, develop and explore’ and exploit additional market opportunities to create maximum value for shareholders.
To this end our primary focus is to build a mine at the Yanfolila Gold Project in Mali, which we acquired from Gold Fields in July 2014. This has a current 1.8 Moz gold inventory based on multiple high grade pits and averaging 2.8 g/t Au. The project is located in the prospective Sikasso Region, 40km to the west of the town of Yanfolila, where we are fully permited and have benefited from established infrastucture.
Since acquiring Yanfolila, we have completed 13,853m of resource drilling, 542m of geotechnical drilling, 1,136m hydrological drilling and 707m of metallurgical drilling. During the period we received exceptional drill intercepts from this drilling which included 19m @ 2.29 g/t Au, 11m @ 8.67 g/t Au, 3m @ 41.5 g/t Au and 2m @ 20.52 g/t Au. These results further re-enforced our confidence in Yanfolia’s prospectivity as a low cost/ high grade project. Shortly thereafter we were delighted to report a positive resource upgrade as part of our on-going Optimisation Study, which is due to be announced Q1 2015. We reported a 153% increase in oxide and transitional Indicated Resources to 600,000 ounces of Au.
We are currently conducting an Optimisation Study for developing Yanfolila as a low cost, high grade open pit mining operation. Results of this are imminent with construction of the mine expected to take 12 months from the start of construction, leading to first gold production in H1 2016.
It is important to note at this stage that we have significant funding supporting our vision of taking Yanfolila towards production in H1 2016. We have a US$75m debt facility agreed with Taurus Funds Management to fund the construction of the Yanfolila Mine, US$10 million of which has already been advanced as a bridge load to fund the Optimisation Study.
Our Dugbe 1 gold project in Liberia offers a significant large-scale development opportunity for Hummingbird. It is located within the Birimian Basin, the world’s second largest gold producing region, characterised by exceptionally large, homogenous grade deposits which offer vast exploration and development scope, such as Dugbe, which has a current Resource of 4.2Moz Au at an average gold grade of 1.4 g/t Au. We previously completed a Preliminary Economic Assessment (‘PEA’) at Dugbe which demonstrated viable economics of developing a 20 year gold mining project with initial gold production of 125,000 ounces, an NPV of US$186 million, IRR of 29% using a US$1,300 gold price. As noted previously Dugbe offers significant upside potential through further exploration and development work.
In conclusion, with an excellent portfolio with clear development paths, a strong management team with the proven technical expertise, and supportive shareholders and funding partners, we believe we are ideally placed to deliver on our objectives of building a leading gold production, development and exploration company. With first gold production at Yanfolila by H1 2016 a near-term reality, we look forward to updating the market with the optimisation study and the commencement of mine construction during 2015.
We would like to take this opportunity of thanking our shareholders, partners, advisors and our management team for their continued support during this transformational time in Hummingbird’s development.
Daniel Betts
CEO
