Nighthawk Gold forms royalty subsidiary
Nighthawk Gold Corp. [NHK-TSXV, OTC-MIMZF] has formed a new wholly-owned subsidiary (RoyaltyCo), which will focus on acquiring royalty interests, making strategic investments and exploring other accretive opportunities.
To start this venture, the company gas granted RoyaltyCo a 2.0% net smelter return royalty on the company’s flagship Colomac project and the entire regional district-scale Indin Lake gold property which is located in the Northwest Territories.
The NSR royalty along with certain cash that Nighthawk plans to transfer to RoyaltyCo will be the initial assets of this new venture.
“If and when market conditions become favourable, we will consider spinning out RoyaltyCo to create further value for shareholders,’’ said Nighthawk President and CEO Keyvan Salehi.
On November 12, Nighthawk shares closed at 34.5 cents and currently trade in a 52-week range of $1.07 and 34.5 cents.
Nighthawk Gold’s key asset is a district-scale land position within the Indin Lake Greenstone Belt, located approximately 200 kilometres north of Yellowknife.
The Indin Lake property, which covers 90,000 hectares and is thought to contain 20 gold deposits, includes the former Colomac open pit gold mine, which produced 528,000 ounces of gold between 1990 and 1997.
Back in March, 2022, Nighthawk released an updated mineral re source estimate on its 100%-owned Indin Lake gold property. The company said the open-pit indicated mineral resource estimate has increased 121% to 2.06 million ounces, up from the 2021 estimate of 933,400 ounces gold. This new estimate reflects a decrease in the average grade to 1.38 g/t gold from 1.62 g/t.
It said open pit inferred resources have jumped 1,400% to 601,000 gold ounces from the 2021 estimate of 40,100 gold ounces. That reflects an increase in the estimate average grade to 2.39 g/t gold, up from 1.68 g/t in a 2021 estimate.
The company said the 2022 estimate demonstrates a significant increase in global (potential open pit plus underground resource ounces). In the indicated category, the global resource estimate has jumped 19% to 2.68 million gold ounces. Global inferred resources have risen 69% to 1.33 million gold ounces.
The estimate was based on 39,065 metres of drilling information from 2021 and 2021 exploration programs, including drilling data that was not included in the 2021 estimate. The estimate covers nine deposits, of which five (Colomac Main, Goldcrest, Grizzly Bear, 24 and 27) are located within the Colomac Centre area.
The remaining four satellite deposits are located between 11 and 28 kilometres from Colomac Centre and include Kim, Cass, Damoti and Treasure Island). They typically demonstrate higher-grade open pit mineralization compared to the deposits within Colomac Centre.