21 Sep Final Results

Galileo Resources Plc
(“Galileo” or the “Company” or the “Group”)

 Audited Results for the year ended 31 March 2022 and Notice of Annual General Meeting

 

Galileo (AIM: GLR), the exploration and development mining company, announces its audited results for the year ended 31 March 2022.

 Highlights for the period under review

 ·    In September 2021, the Company reported that all the conditions precedent had been met in relation to its conditional licence sale agreement of 9 of the Company’s Kalahari Copper Belt licenses with ASX listed Sandfire Resources Limited (“Sandfire”) which it had entered into in January 2021.

·    In December 2021, the Company announced an Asset Sale Agreement entered into between Glenover and JSE Limited listed, Afrimat Limited (“Afrimat”). The Asset Sale Agreement related to the sale for ZAR 250M of certain deposits of phosphate rock located at the Glenover Mine and mining rights to mine the Vermiculite Deposit at the Glenover Mine.

·    In December 2021, the Company announced that Glenover had entered into a conditional sale of shares agreement with Afrimat, Glenover and the shareholders of Glenover under which Glenover has the option (the “Afrimat Option”) to acquire the shares in and shareholders loans made to Glenover for ZAR300M (the “Sale of Shares Agreement”) which is expected to complete by 10 November 2022 if the option is exercised.

·    In December 2021, the Company reported that it had entered into an Option and Joint Venture Agreement with Garbo Resource Solutions Limited, covering the Shinganda Copper-Gold Project, Zambia comprising Large Scale Exploration Licence No. 22990-HQ-LEL. The agreement allows the Company the right to earn an initial 51% interest in the Shinganda copper-gold project in central Zambia, subject to any necessary Zambian regulatory approval, by spending US$0.5m on exploration and evaluation over two years.

·    In December 2021, the Company announced that it had entered into a Joint Venture Agreement (“JV Agreement”) with Statunga Investments, a private Zambian company that owns the Luansobe Project comprising small- scale exploration licence No. 28340- HQ-SEL. The JV Agreement provides the Company the right to earn an initial 75% interest in a special purpose joint venture company to be established under Zambian law to acquire the Licence, and the technical information and other information and assets related to the Luansobe Project by making an initial payment of US$200,000 and a second payment of US$200,000 by 20 February 2022 and issuing 5,000,000 Galileo shares to the Vendor. All of these conditions were met.

·    In March 2022, the Company announced that it had entered into an agreement which assigned to the Company an option granted under an agreement dated 21 January 2022 between BC Ventures Limited (“BC Ventures”) and Cordoba Investments Limited to acquire a 51% interest in BC Ventures. BC Ventures is the owner of a highly prospective lithium project in western Zimbabwe and two gold licences close to Bulawayo through its wholly owned Zimbabwe subsidiary Sinamatella Investments (Private) Limited. Under the terms of the agreement the Company commits to spend US$1.5 million of exploration expenditure within two years.

·    In March 2022, the Company received confirmation that all conditions for Afrimat Limited to acquire the Vermiculite Mining Right from Glenover had been met and that Glenover had elected for the Vermiculite Mining Right Consideration to be paid in cash, of which ZAR10M (approximately £0.5m) was due to the Company.

·    In June 2021, the Company announced that it had agreed a placing of 133,666,664 new ordinary shares at a placing price of 1.5p per share to raise approximately £2,000,000 (before expenses).

·    The Group reported earnings of £1,542,576 (2021: earnings of £87,872).

·    Basic earnings of 0.15 pence (2021: earnings of 0.01 pence) per share.

·    In March 2021, the Company announced the ceding of ownership and operation of the Star Zinc project close to Lusaka to Siege Mining Limited, as it was proving difficult due to its close proximity to municipality housing and industry.

·     In May 2021 the Company reported on the results of the interpretation work on the airborne geophysical survey data over prospecting licences PL40 and PL39 in Botswana. Several targets were identified for drill testing and a contract was signed with a local drilling company.

·    In June 2021, Glenover received confirmation that Department of Water and Sanitation had approved their tailings facility design and waste management plan, and National Nuclear Regulator has approved its nuclear license.

·    In November 2021, the Company announced results of its drilling campaign on the Kalahari Copper Belt licences. The Company drilled in two of its retained licences, with most holes intersecting the target D’kar/Ngwako Pan Fm. One hole intersected a 6.32m interval of 2-5% fine-grained disseminated pyrite at the target horizon level which it was considered might represent a hydrothermal mineral system lateral to a copper occurrence.

Highlights post the period under review

·    In July 2022, the Company announced that options to subscribe for 39,000,000 new ordinary shares of the Company were granted to the directors of the Company and key officers and employees at an exercise price of 1.35 pence per share.

·    In August 2022, the Company announced that it had acquired 29% of BC Ventures for 50 million Galileo ordinary shares.

Notice of Annual General Meeting

Notice is hereby given that the Annual General Meeting of Galileo will be held at Fladgate LLP, 16 Great Queen Street, London, WC2B 5DG on 13 October 2022 at 11:00 a.m.

 

A copy of this announcement is available on the Company’s website www.galileoresources.com. Along with a copy of the Annual Report and Notice of AGM, both of which are being posted to shareholders.

This announcement contains inside information for the purposes of Article 7 of the Market Abuse Regulation (EU) No. 596/2014, as it forms part of UK Domestic Law by virtue of the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. Upon the publication of this announcement, this inside information is now considered to be in the public domain.

You can also follow Galileo on Twitter: @GalileoResource.

For further information, please contact: Colin Bird, Chairman	Tel +44 (0) 20 7581 4477
Beaumont Cornish Limited – Nomad Roland Cornish / James Biddle	Tel +44 (0) 20 7628 3396
Novum Securities Limited – Broker Colin Rowbury/Jon Belliss	Tel +44 (0) 20 7399 9400
Shard Capital Partners LLP -Joint Broker

Damon Heath                                                              Tel +44 (0) 20 7186 9952

 

Chairman’s report

 

Dear Shareholder,

The year under review has been exceptional from many points of view and the Company now has a suite of assets, which we consider to be above average with a number of them being individual company makers in their own right.

Kalahari Copperbelt: Botswana

We reported during May 2021 that we have completed our processing, interpretation and drill target selection of the helicopter geophysical fly-over of the Kalahari licences and that a number of the concessions have favourable results, producing the typical signature that warrants further investigation.

We announced in September 2021 that we completed the conditional sale of approximately 50% of our licences to Sandfire Resources Limited (“Sandfire”), with a deferred payment of up to US$80 million should any of the projects produce certain levels of contained copper. On completion of this agreement, Sandfire agreed to pay Galileo US$1.5 million of cash and issue 370,477 Sandfire ordinary shares, which at the time were worth approximately US$1.8 million. Sandfire agreed to an aggressive two-year exploration budget of US$4 million, and these work programmes are currently underway. Sandfire has had considerable success with its own exploration activities and is well advanced in constructing its’ first mine in the vicinity of licences that Galileo sold to Sandfire.

We undertook exploration on our own retained licences, and although we did not intercept mineralisation in all cases, we intercepted the typical lithology that hosts copper and silver mineralisation. We intend to follow up with these results in the 4th quarter of this year.

Glenover Project: South Africa

In February 2022, we announced that we had completed the partial sale of the Glenover assets to Afrimat Limited (“Afrimat”) for ZAR 50.7 million (approximately £2.4 million), with the remainder of the sale to be completed or abandoned before mid-November 2022. A further interim payment of ZAR 10 million (approximately £0.5 million) was paid to the company in March 2022 for the sale of vermiculite mining rights. Should Afrimat complete the entire transaction, Galileo will be due another ZAR 102 million (approximately £5.2 million) on completion.

Luansobe & Shinganda projects: Zambia

December 2021 was a very acquisitive month for the Company in that we acquired the exploration rights to two major exploration projects in Zambia namely Luansobe and Shinganda. During the post review period, both of these projects have been subjected to desk re-evaluation, legacy core examination and reinterpretation. I am pleased to say at the time of writing this report both projects are showing extremely good potential of certainly achieving small mine status and equally the prospects for a large discovery of copper and possibly gold in the case of Shinganda.

Lithium & Gold projects: Zimbabwe

In March 2022, we announced that we entered into a joint venture relationship with B.C. Ventures Limited (“BC Ventures”) for the rights to acquire a 51% interest against an expenditure of US$1.5 million for lithium and gold exploration properties in Zimbabwe. The agreement also allows for BC Ventures to sell up to 29% at a negotiated value in exchange for Galileo ordinary shares. In August 2022, we announced that the Company acquired 29% of BC Ventures for 50 million Galileo ordinary shares.

The Zimbabwean assets are very high in potential and wide-ranging exploration programmes have already commenced at both sites. The lithium asset is located around the area of the old Kamativi tin mine where the mine dumps are known to contain 0.58% lithium oxide. The lithium oxide is hosted by pegmatites, often in association with tin and the presence of the same prospective geology extending from the Kamativi mine onto our licence is good reason for optimism for a new lithium discovery. Post balance sheet we have carried out desk research and fieldwork exploration. We have taken a suite of samples over a number of target areas and await the assay results.

An airborne geophysical survey has already been conducted over the area covered by the gold asset, located in the vicinity of Bulawayo. Interpreted results are strongly suggestive of greenstone gold terrane and potentially base metal lithology. We intend to generate drill targets and hope to drill during the 4th quarter of 2022.

These two exploration projects are a very exciting addition to the Company’s portfolio, with high potential and we will update the market as the results begin to emerge.

Zimbabwe has expressed its welcome to foreign mining companies to explore and develop and we look forward to establishing a solid exploration capability in the country.

Kashitu Project: Zambia

The Kashitu zinc project in Zambia has been subject to a further review, resulting in a continued commitment to add value and hopefully bring a small initial deposit into production during early 2023.

Star Zinc Project: Zambia

In March 2021 we announced the ceding of ownership and operation of the Star Zinc project close to Lusaka, as it was proving difficult due to its close proximity to municipality housing and industry, even though we had attempted a small mining approach with a local group. The possibility of blasting and the use of large trucks appears to be a limitation on the project, since housing and population density has increased further since project initiation.

Ferber Project: Nevada USA

The Ferber project in the US, remains in good standing and we hope to commence a limited drill programme, before the calendar year end. This programme will essentially test the prognosis that a large gold-copper skarn deposit may occur in the project area.

Prospects

The small cap sector of the natural resource stock markets has been the worst I have experienced in my career and there remains little sign of recovery. This is caused generally by the war in the Ukraine, rampant inflation, and other global geopolitical uncertainty.

At the time of writing all commodities have come off their price highs, although there are already signs of recovery, suggesting that the drop off was short lived and unlikely to be maintained.

Many influential commentators in the commodity sector are strongly predicting scarcity and thus strong metal prices for those companies engaged in the electric vehicle manufacturing. Recently there have been a number of examples of manufacturers making arrangements and contracts with producers, thereby eliminating the trader. This is unique and strongly suggests that both the EV and associated industries have real concern over sustainable and stable supply of critical metals.

Against this background we are convinced that our portfolio is very well placed with quality projects in the right arena. The investor “stand-off” cannot be maintained since history says that the smaller cap explorers are the call option for tomorrow’s metals. That being so, Galileo is extremely well placed.

I would like to thank my fellow directors and management of Galileo for their excellent efforts in what has been a unique year, producing an enviable portfolio, whilst – like all small companies – experiencing considerable head winds against progress.

Colin Bird

Chairman

 

The Galileo Resources PLC Audited Results for the year ended 31 March 2022 are available in full here.