Collective shares hit 12-month peak on high-grade Ramp zone assay

Collective Mining (TSX, NYSE: CNL) shares rose 12.5% Thursday and hit a 12-month high after the company reported the best intercept yet in the recently-discovered Ramp zone at its Guayabales project in western Colombia.

Highlight hole APC105-D1 cut 75.8 metres grading 8.06 grams gold per tonne and 15 grams silver from 469.6 metres depth, including 21 metres at 24.42 grams gold and 37 grams silver, Collective said Wednesday. The hole represents the longest and best intercept so far on a grade-by-metre basis at Ramp, the company said.

“We continue to be pleasantly surprised by the high-grade Ramp zone discovery,” executive chair Ari Sussman said. “We now have an internal 3-D model for Ramp and a working hypothesis explaining why the zone formed, (implying) that Ramp style mineralization can occur over a very large area as it won’t be relegated only to the breccia body at Apollo.”

The result comes about two weeks after Collective drilled what it called its best intercept yet at the larger Guayabales project, which includes the Plutus, Box, Tower and X targets, as well as the Trap and Apollo systems. Ramp, discovered last October, sits 1,150 metres deep inside Apollo and was so named because it’s near in elevation to a conceptual underground haulage tunnel for a future mine at Guayabales.

Collective shares closed at $11.16 apiece Thursday after touching $11.20 earlier in the day, valuing the company at $868.83 million. They’ve gained 162% over the past year.

‘Potential game changer’

Investors will be drawn to Collective’s new internal model, which suggests that the high-grade Ramp zone-style mineralization isn’t limited to the Apollo breccia, BMO Capital Markets analyst Andrew Mikitchook said Thursday in a note. 

“(This is) a potential game changer, in our opinion,” he said. “This new interpretation expands the potential scale of mineralization and could represent a turning point for Collective — the company is planning large step-out drilling to test this theory.”

The second noteworthy hole, APC103-D3, cut 13.25 metres grading 3.13 grams gold and 7 grams silver from 128 metres depth in the Upper zone, with another 20.3 metres in the Ramp zone intersecting 6.62 grams gold and 20 grams silver.

Both holes have expanded the Ramp zone discovery to the west and southwest, Collective said. Ramp remains open in all directions.

Collective is currently drilling with six rigs as part of its fully funded 60,000-metre program for this year. Four rigs are at Apollo, one is drilling at Tower and the sixth is at the San Antonio project, 4 km east of Guayabales. Two more rigs are expected to start turning later this month and early in the second quarter.

The company has completed about 110,000 metres of diamond drilling at Guayabales, including 74,000 metres in 163 holes at Apollo.