Maple in sticky spot

Yet, a recent battle of wills has seen the exit of Matthew Hornor as chief executive and the appointment of chief financial officer Kiran Patankar as interim chief executive.

No reason was given for Hornor's immediate departure other than "the independent directors unanimously concluded that a leadership transition is in the best interests of the company's shareholders and stakeholders".

Company chair Michelle Roth said the crux of the issue was different visions of how the company should advance.

"The alignment was the board wanted to focus on site, and Matthew wanted to focus on M&A," Maple Gold chair and lead independent director Michelle Roth told Mining Journal.

Hornor, who early in his career had been mentored by Robert Friedland, had an eye open for acquisition possibilities, recognising that many junior explorers in Quebec particularly have been trading at very low valuations.

In July 2022, Hornor told Mining Journal, "There is a plethora of opportunities with companies almost on their backs because they can't raise money. They didn't use cash in the right way when they should have, they didn't take money when they could have and that presents a lot of opportunities for opportunistic teams like ourselves. This is the time to transact."

With Hornor favouring doing all share transactions to preserve Maple's cash, the decline in its share price presumably hampered the company's ability to transact.

Shares in Maple Gold are trading at 7c, valuing the company at C$24 million. At the start of the year, shares were trading at 20c.

The irony of the situation does not escape Patankar, who, in addition to holding a BSc in geological engineering from the Colorado School of Mines, also has a MBA. Hornor brought him into Maple in 2021 as senior vice president of growth strategy because of his experience working in investment banking to boost the junior's business development function and help pursue M&A.

"We need to grow, but we also need to de-risk and focus on the operations at our projects in Quebec. There's always going to be opportunities. There's a lot of pain in the sector right now, and I think there is opportunity to grow via M&A, but we need to do it at a point where we've actually unearthed significant value at our current projects," Patankar told Mining Journal.

Exploration strategy

Maple Gold formed a 50-50 joint venture partnership with Agnico Eagle Mines in October 2020, uniting Maple's Douay and Agnico's Joutel projects into a consolidated joint property package, with Agnico to solely fund C$18 million in exploration over four years. The major still has some $7 million of funding commitment to spend.

With this ace in hand, Hornor, with the explicit approval of Agnico, began swinging for the fences with the drill bit. Exploration drilling at Douay was typically to a depth of 300m, occasionally 500m. Still, Hornor wanted to see if the area had the kilometre-plus depth potential that many of the currently producing Abitibi mines have. The result was a programme of 1600m holes and 1km step-outs.

"Five holes along a 6km strike length that you could see upwards of 1km spacing between holes drilled to over 1600m vertical depth. That is a bit of drilling for a needle in a haystack," said Patankar.

Although many holes hit and confirmed the thesis, they did not move Maple's share price in this tough market. Roth and the board thought the company should focus on drilling that would more readily build on and extend Maple's existing resource base.

"We can take some of those shots, but putting all of your eggs in that basket [would be an error]. … The Douay and Joutel projects are the heart and soul of our company.

"The deep drilling holes are there and can be followed up on with wedges that are going to be more cost-effective, but we also need to be spending our scarce and precious resources in an efficient and prudent way. … Just taking deep shots doesn't necessarily de-risk the project. … We are exploring to drive resources that are economic and ultimately coming up with an economic project. … We can do it with a more balanced approach to growing and de-risking and spending our capital prudently," said Patankar.

To help in this effort, Maple recently hired Jocelyn Pelletier, a structural geologist and a specialist in metallogeny, as chief geologist.

Maple aims to announce the next drilling programme, reflecting this moderated approach, soon.

"We are developing our targets for our fall and winter programme, which will be years three and four of the JV programme. Within the next couple of weeks, I expect to have vetted those internally and presented them to our partner. I expect to be able to come to the market with a plan in terms of where we're going from here, how much meterage we expect to drill, what the philosophy is, the expected cost and how it's going to be funded within the next couple of weeks," said Patankar.