Magna Terra is focused on acquiring and advancing its high-potential mineral projects in Atlantic Canada and Argentina while generating value for shareholders and minimizing shareholder dilution through option and joint venture partnerships where appropriate; leveraging our ability to explore, grow, and transact projects. The Company is focused on exploring our 100%-owned Humber Copper-Cobalt Project in Newfoundland and Labrador; our 100% owned Rocky Brook Gold and Critical Metals Project in the historic Bathurst Mining Camp of New Brunswick; and our 100%-owned Cape Spencer Gold Project in New Brunswick. In addition, the Company has optioned the Great Northern Project in Newfoundland to Gold Hunter Resources Inc. (“Gold Hunter”) for total cash and share consideration of $9.5 million over a 2-year period, and currently holds an approximate 28.9% equity interest in Gold Hunter. The Company has also optioned the Luna Roja Project in Argentina to Andean Metals Corp. for total cash and share consideration of $2.375 million over a 4-year period. Further, the Company maintains a significant exploration portfolio in the province of Santa Cruz, Argentina which includes its large 100% owned Boleadora Project recently retained from Newmont Corp., as well as several additional district scale drill ready projects available for purchase or option/joint venture.
INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS:
WSA: Good day from Wall Street, this is Juan Costello, Senior Analyst with the Wall Street Analyzer. Joining us today is Lewis Lawrick, CEO and President at Magna Terra Minerals. The company trades on the TSX Venture MTT, as well as over-the-counter BRIOF. Thanks for joining us today, Lew.
Lewis Lawrick: Well, thank you, Juan. Great to be back on with you.
WSA: Yeah, for sure. So, starting off, please provide an intro and overview of the company here for some of our listeners that didn’t catch our previous interview back in February.
Lewis Lawrick: Absolutely. Magna Terra is a diversified exploration company. Our focus is both on precious metals and on critical metals. Obviously, critical metals has become a little bit of a buzzword, very, very important right now with what’s going on globally in terms of supply chain issues, et cetera. We have two principal areas of focus in terms of where we are geographically. Atlantic Canada is our main area of focus, the provinces of New Brunswick and Newfoundland, where we have our flagship projects. And then also, we have a deep portfolio in Southern Argentina in the gold-rich province of Santa Cruz.
I would say the key to our team is we’ve had successes with other companies. We’ve had a lot of success in Atlantic Canada. We’ve got a deep geologically technical team that has made discoveries in advanced projects from literally grassroots all the way up to a development decision basis. So we’re looking to do it again in Atlantic Canada specifically.
WSA: Great. What have been the major developments and progress since we last spoke?
Lewis Lawrick: Well, I guess we last spoke was in the spring. Lots has gone on. We’ve been incredibly busy. We’ve got, obviously, numerous projects that we’re advancing, but I would say the major developments are we did receive our first option, first anniversary option payment from Gold Hunter, which was about $3.4 million in cash and marketable securities for that option deal on our Great Northern Gold project in Western Newfoundland.
We also have struck a deal this past September or August-September to auction our Luna Roja project in Southern Argentina to a company called Andean Metals, which is a very well-placed group. Have had some successes themselves, so very excited to see them take that project. That’s going to pay us almost 2.8 million over the four-year option period. We continue to advance, monetize the projects in our portfolio that are, I won’t say non-core, but are second or tertiary to our primary projects. Speaking of our primary projects, we’ve advanced initial exploration activities on both our Rocky Brook project in the Bathurst Camp of New Brunswick, famous, prolific Bathurst Camp of New Brunswick, and the Humber project and Copper Cobalt project in Western Newfoundland. We’ve completed first-phase exploration over the summer, and happy to say that we’ve made walk-up discoveries on both projects.
WSA: Yeah, so can you bring us up to speed on some of the most recent news there, as you just had some extension zones there at surface at the Humber project and also identified some exploration targets there in New Brunswick?
Lewis Lawrick: Yeah, so let’s start with in Western Newfoundland at Humber. This is a project our team has put together based on just available data through the provincial geological survey and other publicly available data, and it’s quite compelling. We believe the area is totally unexplored prior, so we acquired it by staking, so there’s no underlying option costs. There’s no royalties hindering it, so it’s all ours, 100%. Large project, approximately 50,000 hectares, but literally we’ve got a walk-up discovery at surface in the Hughes Lake area of the project. We’ve now extended the surface copper mineralization through soil sampling to over 2.2 kilometers, and we now see that that could extend for a further minimum of 1.7 kilometers, so this looks like it could be a very big system.
Obviously, it’s early days, but when you see that level of anomalous copper mineralization at surface in outcrop and in soils, in rocks, it’s come from somewhere, so we’re quite optimistic that we’re onto something pretty interesting at Humber.
With regards to Rocky Brook and the Bathurst Camp, historic camp known mostly for large VMS, volcanic massive sulfide deposits that have been mined, numerous mines in the camp over the years, lots of infrastructure. So it’s effectively a brownfield area, but recently Puma and Kinross have advanced a significant gold discovery, so with our property portfolio, we’ve got effectively exposure to both the gold, call it the gold horizon, and the VMS, the traditional VMS horizon. And this past summer we did make an interesting discovery in rocks, VMS discovery in rocks sampled covering about 300 meters at our Boudreaux Brook portion of the project. So we’re back in there right now with crews doing further soils, and we’re going to complete a trench program here before the snow flies.
WSA: Yeah, in your experience, Lew, what makes these projects unique from some of the other plays that you’ve seen there in the sector?
Lewis Lawrick: Well, I think what makes us unique is, first of all, for a little company, we’ve got a very deep project portfolio, and it’s something that we put together during the downturn in our industry when effectively projects were cheap to acquire. We went on acquired projects. We saw it as an opportunity to build a deep project portfolio. And now that things are turning more positive with regards to commodity prices and certainly interest, capital markets interest in the sector, we’re seeing the potential value of these projects really turn around. So we’ve got a deep portfolio, we’ve got an excellent technical team, so we have kind of a dual or a two-pronged strategy.
We prioritize what we would call our flagship projects, so Rocky Brook and Humber, and we advance those ourselves, ideally through a discovery or similar stage. But we also have this deep property pool to draw from, and as we’ve shown, we have done transactions. We’ve monetized several of these projects that are effectively accretive to us and our shareholders for cash and marketable securities, so effectively non-dilutive financing, which in the junior mining business is manna from heaven when you don’t have to go to the markets to raise cash when you can generate that cash internally. That’s a significant benefit. So I think that’s the thing that makes us most unique.
We are an exploration-focused company, but we generate non-dilutive cash and marketable securities opportunities with our deep portfolio.
WSA: So, yeah, what are some of those key goals and milestones that you’re hoping to accomplish here over the course of the next three to six months?
Lewis Lawrick: Well, certainly we’re in phase two of our exploration efforts at both Humber and Newfoundland and at Rocky Brook and New Brunswick. At Humber, we’ve now started a significant stream — we’ve completed a VTEM survey, an airborne geophysical survey over the entire 50,000-hectare project area, which generated some very interesting magnetic and electromagnetic conductors that could be coincident with mineralization or targets.
And so we’re now doing stream sediment analysis over these targets to develop the geochemical signature. And once we achieve that, we’ll basically have numerous targets to follow up with a potential drill program in 2026. So we’re in the target development stage at Humber. Similarly, at Rocky Brook and New Brunswick, we’re advancing a prospecting soil geochemistry and a trenching program over some targets that we identified using historic geophysics. And as well, we utilized a company that had all of the Bathurst database basically downloaded into their system. They’re an AI, exploration AI company, and we’ve utilized their machine learning tool with regards to our projects to help hone in and analyze some of the data on our project to come up with what could be, as well, bona fide exploration targets.
So we’re advancing Phase II exploration over these targets. There’s at least seven of them that we’ve identified on Rocky Brook. So we’re advancing those to again, be at a drill-ready stage sometime in 2026.
WSA: Yeah, certainly. And so perhaps you can talk about your background, Lew, as well as who the key management team is and how your interests are aligned with that of, not just current shareholders, but potential investors.
Lewis Lawrick: Absolutely. My background, I’ve been involved effectively in junior mining or junior exploration really, since the early 2000s. I came to it mostly as an investor. And that, through my own and my long-time business partner in our private merchant bank, we modified our business approach early on to basically take significant positions in companies, projects, bringing in technical teams. So I’ve been a part of six or seven start-ups now that there’s been — and four or five, I guess, transactions where we’ve sold assets or the entire company to larger companies and generated a relatively healthy return for our shareholders. Through that process, I’ve developed relationships, strong relationships. A lot of it has been focused the last 15 years in Atlantic Canada.
I founded a company called Anaconda Mining, which became Signal Gold, which is now called NexGold. And NexGold is advancing the Goldboro deposit in Nova Scotia, which our technical team is also — we share a technical team with them. That’s a three-plus-million-ounce gold resource that just — they just completed a $110-million-bought deal and are moving through the development stage as we speak.
So that speaks to, I guess, the long tenure we’ve had in Atlantic Canada. Our ability to take a project from grassroots all the way to development, the depth of our technical team having moved these projects from early-stage exploration all the way to basically a mining decision. So it’s been an interesting — if you would have asked me when I was in university that this is what I’d be doing 30, 40 years later, I would have said, no way, but you know what? I wouldn’t change it for the world. It’s been interesting. And the level of education I’ve received along the way just by participating has been fantastic.
WSA: Yeah, great, great. And so, as you just mentioned, will you continue to look for other earn-in agreements such as the Luna Roja or strategic partnerships?
Lewis Lawrick: Yeah, absolutely. We’ve actually got a data room set up and we’ve got multiple companies in the data room looking both at our Cape Spencer project, gold project in New Brunswick and our portfolio in Argentina. So I fully expect, in the fullness of time here, that one or more of these projects will get — we will get monetized in some sort of a either joint venture, outright purchase or an option to purchase transaction much like we’ve done with Luna Roja. I’m very confident that we’ll continue to have success partnering or monetizing our projects.
And on that end, we are also — we’re also always looking at other projects to acquire. So we do both.
WSA: What would be some of the synergies that you would look for?
Lewis Lawrick: Well, for us, it’s — when we evaluate a project, first of all, for us to acquire, it’s got to be something that we can see. The geology has to be such that we could see making a major discovery, number one. It has to be supported by infrastructure, ideally, because if you find a project in an area that you need to basically bring all the infrastructure in, whether it’s water or power or transportation, you’re looking at significantly higher CapEx costs to build that mine. And therefore, you’re going to find that much bigger deposit to make it economic.
So we always look for not only the geology, but supported by infrastructure. And one of the things that not many people talk about, but I think on my experience, it’s absolutely dead important is the jurisdiction, safety of the jurisdiction, the political climate of the jurisdiction. It has to be a place that is inviting and accepting and encouraging of mining. So that’s very, very important that you can — if you do make a discovery, that you can actually get the social license to move it forward and develop it. So that’s what we look for.
In terms of the projects that we have, they all meet those categories. So that’s, I think, one of the reasons that a number of — so many companies are in our data room looking at our projects, because they are in excellent areas with known geology, close to other mines or available infrastructure, and in regimes or provinces or locales that are supportive of mining.
WSA: Great. And so current U.S. share price right now, 12 cents a share, market cap at about 11 million U.S. Before we conclude here, Lew, why do you believe investors should consider the company as a good investment opportunity at this point today?
Lewis Lawrick: Well, I like to look at it as, if you break the company down on a sum of the parts basis, you’ll realize how highly undervalued we are. I’ll leave the projects, and I’ll speak to them last, but just in terms of we currently have a portfolio of shares of other companies. We have 40 million shares of Goldhunter, represents about a 30% interest in that company. We have a royalty portfolio. These are — they have real market value. We have incoming option payments from deals we’ve done totaling about $9 million over the next four years. So that’s coming in to us in cash and marketable securities. And the ability to do further deals like that that generate not only cash, marketable securities and underlying royalties for us with our portfolio.
So then that’s — so that part, you put it all together, it’s worth as much or more than the current market cap of the company. And then you look at all of our projects that seemingly would be getting no value, that we’re advancing and we’re going to look at — we’re going to be advancing two of our projects ourselves that I’ve mentioned here, Humber and Rocky Brook, through to drill-ready stage here in the next six months. Goldhunter is going to be advancing the project that they have from us under our option, Great Northern. They’re going to be drilling in 2026. So we’re exposed to that as a large shareholder. And then, as I said, Andean is going to be advancing Luna Roja and we’re going to be a large shareholder of Andean. So we’ve got exposure there.
So, I look at, as I said, on a sum of the parts basis. If we broke it all up and sold it piece by piece, it’d be worth a lot more than what the market’s giving for us now. So I think there’s considerable upside. And then if on any one of those projects, a discovery is made, well, then it’s a moonshot.
WSA: Well, we certainly look forward to continuing to track the company’s growth and report on the upcoming progress. And we’d like to thank you for taking the time to join us today, Lew, and update our investor audience on Magna Terra Minerals. It’s always good having you on.
Lewis Lawrick: Well, Juan, I want to thank you for having me on and I look forward to keeping you and your viewers up to date as we progress here through the end of ’25 and into ’26. I’m very excited about everything we’ve got going on.
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