Hathor Exploration

Let's make some notes from what I can find round the internet.

HATHOR EXPLORATION (T-HAT) $2.75 +0.28


It was a couple of weeks ago that technical analyst Bill

Carrigan...a guy whose work we really admire, suggested

the uranium sector was starting to bottom and would be

his favorite sector in the resource sector. He suggested at

the same time that it would take a couple of more weeks of

bottoming for the other sectors in the resource area and

boy, has he been right about that! Remember his call of

selling the resource sector back in early March? Bang-on

Bill!

His idea on uranium and his pick was Uranium Participation

(U) and it has definitely had a bottoming process,

although it has not started to go up yet. On the other hand,

there is Hathor Exploration that in the last couple of days

has started flying.

President Mike Gunning has been doing presentations

around Bay Street and he was featured on BNN (once

again, you absolutely must-see this presentation: Click

here:

http://watch.bnn.ca/#clip468404

and it looks like there is going to be some further analyst

coverage. The surprising news on the resource number

was the size. When you are getting up to 58 or 60 million

pounds, that is significant and add in the Far East and you

are flirting with 70 million pounds. This is some of the

higher grade uranium on the planet in the perfect jurisdiction

(Saskatchewan) close by potential buyers such as

AREVA, Cameco (and hopefully not Denison) and Hathor is

now finally leading the uranium sector.

If you want to do some dreaming, consider this: Uranium

One (UUU) at the end of March closed their purchase

of Mantra, the Australian firm in a billion dollar plus deal

for their assets in the middle of a national park in Tanzania,

Africa and had a very, very low grade. It was sold at the

equivalent of $10.00 a pound. Now work out what Hathor

might be worth ..

Hathor Exploration* (HAT : TSX : $2.46), Net Change: 0.16, % Change: 6.96%, Volume: 1,754,073


On a weight-gain program. Hathor Exploration announced an initial resource statement for the East Zone, effectively doubling the amount of the contained U3O8 lbs at its 100%-owned Roughrider uranium project. The East Zone is estimated to contain 118,000 Inferred tonnes at 11.59% U3O8 for 30.13 million lbs of uranium contained. In total, Roughrider now contains Indicated + Inferred resources of 555,800 tonnes at 4.7% U3O8 for a significant 57.9 million lbs of uranium contained. Unlike the West Zone, the East Zone resource is not uniformly mantled by a rim of low grade mineralization; however, there is abundant low grade mineralization surrounding the deposit that is not included in the current resource model, and represents additional resource potential. A Bay Street analyst commented that he now expects Hathor to focus on the recently discovered Far East Zone, which could also considerably increase the Roughrider resource. A uranium deposit of this size could also encourage potential suitors to start looking at Hathor. Generally, an Athabasca uranium deposit past the 50 million lbs is considered a threshold to become attractive for development and a potential acquisition target from a senior developer. Later in the day on Tuesday, after one analyst highlighted that Hathor's "huge Roughrider deposit makes it a tempting takeover target", Hathor's CEO Mike Gunning told BNN the company would be open to a takeover from any uranium miner. “If you were a uranium miner for the next 30 years, you want to be in the Athabasca basin,” Gunning said. Adding that, “For the first time, Roughrider is presenting a potential entry point for any of these companies.”

Conclusion: We continue to recommend Hathor at BUY and increase our 12-month share target price to C$5.60. We believe Hathor is fast becoming a take-over target. Its 100% owned Midwest Northeast project should be attractive to just about anyone - whether they already have projects in the Athabasca Basin such as Cameco (CCO-T: C$25.92, Not Rated), AREVA, Denison (DML-T: C$1.95, Not Rated), or those that might be interested in getting into the Basin.




With the addition of another 30 MM lbs grading 11.58% U3O8 to Hathor's existing 27.8 MM lbs, the now 58 MM lb U3O8 Roughrider deposit located in the Athabasca Basin has become one of the world great uranium deposits (Figures 1 & 2). Excluding the low grade, its average ranks it fourth in the world after McArthur River, Cigar Lake and Phoenix. Roughrider also overtakes Phoenix in size. We expect further growth - the initial Roughrider Far East resource is expected in the fall.



Hathor's Roughrider deposits are now worth US$3.3 billion in situ using today's rebounding US$57.75/lb uranium spot price. The market cap of the company is only C$250 million….we believe that this is well undervalued and something has to give. We have increased our Roughrider assumption to 69.5 MM lbs from 53.2 MM lbs and value these pounds at US$7/lb U3O8…a 36% discount to Cameco's EV/lb and a 30% premium to the producer group average. We believe this premium is warranted due to the deposits high grade nature, favourable jurisdiction, proximity to infrastructure (road, power line, airport) and the world's only high grade uranium mill at McLean Lake just 17km to the east.



Roughrider now totals 58 MM lbs U3O8 - most of it high grade



· 118,000t grading 11.58% for 30.13 MM lbs U3O8. This new East resource is all high grade and very insensitive to cut-off grades. SRK Consulting used a 0.4% U3O8 cut-off as a base case. The resource remains unchanged at 30 MM lbs is one were to use a 1% U3O8 cut-off. Using a 3% cut-off the deposit still totals 29.2 MM lbs of U3O8.



· Consistent lower zone makes the difference. The lower basal zone at Roughrider East is more consistent than first anticipated and has held up well from hole to hole. This zone was added to the two known upper zones to make up the core of Roughrider East. The East Zone also grades in line with the high grade core of the West Zone.



· Hathor over-delivered. The East resource is better then we had expected. We were looking for 22-24 MM lbs U3O8 at ~6.75% U3O8 based on our back of the envelope mineral inventory for just a 40m x 40m x 40m core of high grade situated around Line 20 W. This deposit is 100m west of the Roughrider west resource and immediately east of Roughrider Far East. It measures 120m along strike, 40-50m wide on average, 80-100m thick, and is located at 250m depth or about 30-50m below the unconformity. We re-iterate that this deposit lies within basement rocks which are much preferred for rock quality and ground stability when dealing with unconformity style uranium deposits.



· Focus on the high grade core. We identify ~54 MM lbs of high grade uranium from the 58 MM lb total resource and believe that this is a better way to look at the economic potential of the deposits. Hathor's breakdown of the Roughrider into inferred and indicated resources suggests only 40.7 MM lbs of high grade mineralization. We believe it is more suitable (although not NI-43-101 compliant) to consider the high grade core of Roughrider West in relation to its lower grade shell, and then to consider Roughrider East (Table 1a and 1b).



Table 1a shows the breakdown of total resources at the Roughrider Uranium deposit using 43-101 compliant categories. This suggests only 40.7 MM lbs of high grade mineralization. Table 1b shows the breakdown of total resources while identifying the high grade core of the West Zone and a total of 54.3 MM lbs of high grade.





Source: Company Reports, Dundee Capital Markets



Strengthening our valuation



· We increase our Roughrider assumption to 69.5 MM lbs U3O8. This is up from 53.2 MM lbs as reality has blown away our previous estimates. We value Roughrider using a pounds-in-the-ground valuation of US$7/lb - until we see some visibility as to timing of production, capital and operating cost assumptions. We had used US$8/lb. HAT is currently trading at an EV per lb of $4.04. This compares to $5.23/lb market value for the producers and C$2.37/lb for the developers. We believe that a take-over value of $7 to $8 per lb seems reasonable.


Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs
Comments
Loading...
Posted In: Electrical Components & EquipmentIndustrials
Benzinga simplifies the market for smarter investing

Trade confidently with insights and alerts from analyst ratings, free reports and breaking news that affects the stocks you care about.

Join Now: Free!