Bayhorse Silver: One Thing After Another
Bayhorse Silver (BHS.V) CEO, Graeme O’Neill is a friend of mine. We speak on the phone pretty much every second day. In terms of total number of shares held, BHS is my largest holding. I’m not just biased, I am cheerleading. (The old scoundrel is pictured above with the ore sorter.)
Bayhorse put out a release today announcing that it has received the diamond drilling permit for its readily accessible Brandywine Gold, Silver and Volcanogenic Massive Sulphide (VMS) Project, Whistler, BC, Canada. Drilling will start soon. But Bayhorse has already re-analysed core which had been taken from the property years ago and found intervals grading as high as 20 gpt gold. Brandywine has huge potential as a fairly easy to mine, high-grade, gold property.
But wait, isn’t Bayhorse a silver mine in Oregon? With an ore sorter and mill it just finished building in Idaho? Yes, yes it is. The mill is operational and has processed test amounts of the sorted rock from the Bayhorse mine. Moving to full-scale production at about 50 tons per day is simply a matter of having the OPEX in hand to run the mine and the mill until revenues come in. (The depressed price of silver over the last few months has changed up a number of the revenue assumptions which drive the mill. And the spike in transportation costs, both of containers and basic diesel have put dents, if not holes, in some of the cost assumptions. Both are being worked on and profitable production is coming into focus.)
Having an actual mill in being has opened up a number of possibilities for Bayhorse, none of which can be discussed specifically here as the details are not yet public. (And I don’t know them either.) Suffice to say that the Oregon/Idaho/Northern Nevada area is chock a block with small mines which need the ability to process rock in relatively small batches. Bayhorse does not have to go and find these opportunities: simply by having an operating mill, the miners find Bayhorse. Whether rock is processed on a toll milling basis or Bayhorse joint ventures with the miners, it is all money to the bottom line.
Meanwhile, O’Neill, always interested in innovation, has been casting about for ways to move past the production of “concentrate” for shipment to offshore smelters to the world of actually producing metal at the mill. Again, the details have not been publically released, but the ability to do a “mine to mint” operation for material from the Bayhorse Mine and other local mines would be huge. The technology exists.
So, Bayhorse is a lot more than a mine in Oregon which means, in the next few months, that the Company will have a stream of “hard news”. Everything from the start of production at the Idaho mill to agreements with small miners in the area to drill results at Brandywine. It has taken a long time to set the table but the Brandywine permit is a pretty clear signal that dinner is on its way.
Right at the moment, like many silver stories, Bayhorse is sitting close to its all-time low. In May 2021 it touched $0.25 a share, now it’s trading at $0.045. With juniors, a lot of the money to be made is in picking the right entry point. Obviously, the lower the better. But you also have to look at what you are getting. In Bayhorse’s case, a fully complete silver mine, a paid-for ore sorter and a fully paid-for, operational mill, the blue sky of Brandywine, all for a market cap of a little over 10 million dollars.
While news flow is the lifeblood of junior resource companies, the news release the markets will be looking for is “Revenue”. Most juniors never earn a nickel. Most of the successful ones are bought as development deals long before they make a dollar. O’Neill has always been driving towards having Bayhorse first gain revenue and then, crazy as this sounds, making a profit.
It looks to me as if the bottom is in for both gold and silver metal prices. Bringing silver production online as silver is rising will attract market attention. Toll milling or joint venturing a gold stream through the mill will bring more market attention. A few decent holes at the Brandywine and $0.25 per share will fade into the rearview mirror.
It’s been a long wait but it very much looks like Graeme O’Neill is bringing the Bayhorse down the home stretch.
Disclosure: Graeme O’Neill is a friend. I own shares in Bayhorse Silver (BHS.V), a lot of shares, and may buy more or sell some or all at any time. This is not investment advice. Do your own due diligence.