Canadian Critical Minerals (CCMI.V) drives me crazy.
Copper is pennies away from its all time high. Copper projects which are years, decades, away from mining are seeing their share prices up 30-100%. Everyone and their dog is now aware that copper demand exceeds supply.
So why is CCMI, with a 150,000,000 pound copper MRE at the Bull River Mine, gold and silver credits, drilling disclosing additional high grade copper and increasing gold and silver at depth, a mine, a mill on site, a stockpile, First Nations co-operation and a pending permit application likely to succeed in the more mining friendly environment British Columbia has become, trading at $0.03? That’s a market cap of 10 million dollars.
There is a bit of a paradox when it comes to the valuation of junior resource companies: the further along the development curve they are the less blue sky and speculative interest they generate.
A company like Intrepid Metals (INTR.V) gets market attention with little more than a 43-101 compliant Technical Report and some interesting IP is trading at $0.86 for a market cap of 106 million, ten times the market cap of CCMI. There are reasons for this and, oddly, they have little to do with actual resources in the ground.
The junior resource market implicitly values companies on a variety of metrics not directly related to resources, reserves or existing infrastructure. What is a company’s prospective hard news flow? Are there drills turning? What are the chances a company will be bought out? INTR is right at the beginning of a drilling season which will generate plenty of hard news and, with a bit of luck, some seriously headline results. INTR is actively engaged in doing the mapping and alteration analysis to further identify drill targets at it Arizona property. Drilling a near surface CRD mineralization and then drilling deeper for the copper porphyry prospect will produce the sorts of results and the press releases the market loves. The possibility of gold and silver credits is the sort of upside speculative investors like to see.
It does not hurt INTR one bit that Ivanhoe Electric has spent millions at its Gleeson project which is right next door. The fact that Rio Tinto snapped up the claims on the other side of INTR’s Corral project is suggestive. Yes, Intrepid is a very plausible takeover target.
Senior market participants will point out that this is all speculative, there is no 43-101 resource, drills can miss, the metallurgy has not really begun, at best Corral is years and probably 100s of millions of dollars away from production. All of which is true but does not matter much to the junior resource investor, much less the speculators and traders who power the market. Even at $0.86 there is a real possibility of 2X, a good chance for 5X and an outside chance of 10X or better. Heck, I’m up about 25% and the fun really has not yet begun.
Intrepid is right at the cusp of the second phase of the famous Lassonde Curve, “Discovery” and this is the phase where speculative excitement peaks. A few good holes and INTR could be a $4.00 stock. And the blue sky goes on forever because it is not obvious where the limits of the deposit (if it is a deposit) actually are.
Canadian Critical is stuck on the edge of the third, the valley of death, phase of Mr. Lassonde’s curve with work being done on the engineering and permitting for the Bull River mine. That work, once completed, will quickly tip CCMI into the fourth phase of the Lassonde curve with the financing piece outstanding.
Financing the restart of the Bull River mine might actually be the easy part of the process largely because the CAPEX is really quite low. The mine and mill have a combined 100 million dollars worth of usable infrastructure, are connected to grid power and has an all weather road. It would still be expensive but think 25-50 million rather than the 500 million and up to bring most copper projects into production.
Junior resource companies almost never bring their projects into production. Explore, develop and then a larger company will buy the derisked asset. That is certainly one path Canadian Critical could follow. However, CEO Ian Berzins is, in fact, a mining engineer whose career has included many underground mining operations. Unlike a lot of junior resource companies CCMI actually has a mining CEO and, well, a mine. This opens up options including the most obvious, a joint venture with a larger miner looking to increase its copper production.
The biggest concern I have with CCMI is that it seems incapable of meeting its own timetable to submit the materials needed for the final permitting to take place. First the company said Q1 2026, then June 3 2026, it said “within the next 60 days”. Final submission is almost always the occasion for a press release, so far nothing.
The market hates silence and, for a little while longer, CCMI will be silent as there will be no “news” to report. Where it will pick up market interest is when, likely 120 days after submission of the material for the permit, the permit is granted. At that point the market will pay attention and Canadian Critical will be re-rated as a potential producer.
The sharp increase in the price of copper makes a potential operation like the Bull River mine very attractive indeed. There’s nearly a billion USD in copper waiting to be mined.
Interestingly, since the beginning of August, trading volume in CCMI has picked up with several 2 million share days.
(Disclaimer: I hold shares in both Intrepid and Canadian Critical. I may sell at any time. This is not investment advice. Do your own due diligence. Call the CEO.)