American West Metals (ASX: AW1; FRA: R84; OTCQB: AWMLF) is on a roll. The company has quietly and effortlessly secured 3,087,500 AUD in fresh capital at a price of $0.095 per share to expand its ongoing drilling on the Storm Project on Somerset Island in Nunavut. According to reports, investors offered the company many times the amount raised. The closing price in Australian trading consequently rose to 0.145 AUD (up 21%) with a trading volume of around 3 million AUD.
Conclusion: The strong investor interest and recent share price development underline the special position of American West’s Storm discovery. American West stands out from the crowd of junior explorers in the current extremely cautious market environment. With a hit rate of 100 percent for its drilling so far, the company is well on its way to presenting a maiden resource for the near-surface zones 4100N, 2000N and 2750N in autumn. The exciting aspect is that these high-grade copper occurrences could be suitable for open-pit mining with direct shipping due to their location and simple mineralogy. This would free American West from the capex trap in which, for example, porphyry copper explorers are stuck. American West plans to provide an update on this shortly. However, the real game-changer was recently the spectacular publication of the gravity survey. The data support the thesis that a much larger copper system is located directly below the near-surface copper targets drilled so far (see Figures 1 and 2). This interpretation is supported by gravity data and by matching historical geophysical anomalies. Moreover, American West discovered copper sulphides in drill hole ST22-10 in 2022, although this hole was located on the edge of one of the newly identified gravity targets, as we now know. Investors have now given American West sufficient capital to begin drilling the large sedimentary copper target at depth. If drilling is successful, American West’s share price development to date would probably seem like just a prelude. The company’s current market value is around 47.5 million AUD.
