[Music] this interview is for information only and should not be considered as investment advice or a recommendation to buy shares in the company featured welcome to this stockbox [Music] interview well I'm here at Mining Journal select here in London with sha Wade the CEO of power metal resources and Rick rule of course of rule investment media so pleasure to meet you in person of course we did that podcast only a week or two ago uh but it was very interesting for me thank you very much for taking some time to talk to us today I watch your keynote this morning how did you feel it went well I'm hoping it went okay you're you're unwise to ask the author how it went the Temptation Of course is to say the speaker was brilliant well I liked what you said about it being very quiet here you know and that's perhaps a sign of uh where we are because your your phrase of you know you the cure for low prices is low prices I thought maybe the cure for low interest is also low interest what do you think well certainly the theme of the second part of my talk was that you have to love hate that uh you have to buy things that are out of favor the crowd compared to the crowd that I compared it to which is to say the New Orleans conference in 1980 uh This Crowd this morning was probably 60 uh that crowd was between 6 and 8,000 so that says something to the upside yeah indeed indeed well Sean did you you you caught the keut didn't you as well this morning anything stand out to you that Rick said well I think the the thing that really struck me from from Rick's talk was the talk about mean reversion particularly in the gold markets yeah I think four times the demand I think you were saying for gold simply from a reversion to the mean and that just I think is a a really good indication of how a lot of mining equities explorers and physical Commodities are under owned in portfolios yeah indeed it stood up to me as well that fact well you talked about this Merchant banking model before but I wonder if I can hear from your own words what you actually mean by Merchant banking model I know that's what power are doing and that's what's interested you in in power metal resources but from your own words what do you mean by Merchant banking uh to me a merchant Banker is sort of like a value added investment banker which is to say that rather than extract fees the merchant Banker adds money a critical difference but they add more than money if they're good at what they do they add expertise or I might call it adult supervision I had the extraordinary Good Fortune of being a shareholder in the Goodman family Merchant Bank dunde Bank Corp when they spun it uh out of Corona and I watched that stock go from inception at 60 Canadian cents to 42 Canadian dollars uh now it took six or seven years of hard work but that told me that if you could employ capital and employ in intelligence simultaneously that the return to shareholders could be isn't always extraordinary most Merchant Banks in the mining and energy business are privately held they're mostly family offices what Robert Friedland does is Merchant banking with the line family does as merchant banking what Ross Bey does as merchant banking it's very seldom that you have the opportunity to participate in a mining Merchant Bank in the public context okay okay and is that what you see in power metal resources then I know from when we spoke last time you also said that you you pick stocks based on the people within the business and the ability to deliver on that model and you did interview with Shan um I think last week Fu Symposium and Shan you explained that you take early stage opportunities you you add value through lowcost investment uh exploring techniques and you seek to monetize that value is that why you like Po is that why you were interested in pow partly that in my youth I was part of building probably 40 public shells okay I did that because the way that you get in on the ground floor is to create the ground floor uh I'm 71 years of age I'm not going to do that for my own account anymore uh the micro cap Market is one where there's a lot of information uh asymmetry uh and one that has spectacular upside if you're prepared to do the work and at 71 years of age I'm less willing and frankly less able so in terms of creating the ground floor opportunities uh that's what Shaun is prepared to do and I'm uh prepared if I can to hang on his coattails and see what happens okay good good good good now I also remember that you said that you don't like one project companies you know you like to go for companies that have lots of projects and of course po have many projects all over the world which will briefly touch on in a moment but I wonder if I can ask you a question what metrics are you using to measure their success in the field and how that fits with the company's model I know you spend an hour a month assessing your portfolio an hour a week I think it was actually an hour a month a month per what I would call well like sub2 billion companies I spend frankly no time on Exxon I don't feel I need to I've own it for a very long time yeah uh the the smaller companies uh I spend at least an hour a month and I and I should distinguish myself from other investors other investors have lives uh I don't but I have staffs and other investors do so when I say I spend an hour a month if you look at the total staff time involved in portfolio companies we're probably spending six or seven hours a month that's more sufficient in terms how all of how I'll measure Sean yeah that's pretty easy you look at net asset value per share not book value but rather net asset value per share based on market and you look at how much capital is gone to generate that if he spends $10 million generating $2 million in net asset value I'll fire him in the market meaning I'll sell my stock if by contrast he delivers 10 or 15 million in net asset value per share uh with a sunk capital investment of $2 million then I'll probably buy more stock okay okay it's pretty simple so Sean how are you going to deliver on that net asset value then well first of all I mean just to say very much thanks to to Rick and and to have his support and validation for for our model and our businesses is absolutely fantastic but look in terms of delivering value hopefully I think we've we've shown some of that already if you look at uh gold or metal uh resources soon to be renamed Guardian metal resources you know we ipoed that about a year ago and it's now about 60% of our market cap because it's performed extremely well so I think the market hasn't caught up with the value yet I mean we're obviously I would say undervalued in relative to to that move in in the guardi metal share price but another great example I think is our uranium portfolio I mean we've staked out a big portfolio we've done a lot of work um early stage field work the kind of thing you you talked about in your introduction um and I think you know the we spent something over about a million pounds there or thereabouts um and we've we're just about to complete a deal we're in the process of completing a deal we're still within a a due diligence period but we're obviously very optimistic that deal will complete um with a globally significant resource investor who's valued that portfolio around about 10 million pounds so you know I think in terms of a a return if we obviously and that's by the way before we make a commercial discovery which is the objective clearly for that for that business so for par metal shareholders they're going to get a 30% free carry on that business um and they're going to I hope uh very soon you know see some major sort of commercial discoveries but with without having to syn more Capital into that asset you know and that's really the the heart of the model now we're turning our attention to Saudi Arabia I think we've talked a little bit about we've put out a really exciting announcement today about a fieldwork program that's completed we've got more news to come across the Saud portfolio and what the power Arabia portfolio is going to be is the same model the incubator model but pure play focus on that Arabian Shi region so if we can deliver the kind of value there that we've done already in some of our Canada and North American assets I think shareholders are going to do very very well okay and is it purely going to be you going to always look for an exit or you going to develop some projects if they have that potential do you think I think that's a very good question because you know hither two the way I look at the balance of the portfolio now it's about explore and then crystallize and we do that through IPOs or JVS out Sals and so on the Saudi opportunity could be a bit different in the sense that some of the Partnerships that are potentially available to us could involve operations at a slightly later stage of the life cycle so we could see some mind development we have said before you know typically we don't build mind but what we do is we return value to shareholders we M money if you like as to to pass Rick's comments um and so where it makes sense for shareholders and where it makes sense from a capital allocation point of view you know we'll look at all opportunities okay and on a daily basis then how are you sort of assessing the portfolio or measuring the potential for success versus you know potentially a project becoming effectively a cash drain on on on on the company well that's also extremely important I mean I've got you know a lot of a lot of Hungry Mouse to feed you know at any at any moment in time and it's very important that those businesses stand on their own two feet they get their own Capital uh and ultimately they look to uh either spin out our IPO or or some other way so as again parabas we've talked about we we we've mentioned um you know a large pre-ipo financing round you know this will be and I've said it before you it'll be probably the biggest thing we've ever done in terms of a preo and then onto an IPO it'll give the opportunity to get some serious investment into that business um but that will allow power Ria fund itself fund all its Drilling and operations um and will be owned partly by us the parent partly by external shareholders uh and again you know our shareholders will see value creation over time as those businesses make their own discoveries and and their own success do you think it's fair to say that golden metal resources now Guardian metal resources is is a a perfect example of of the model uh being executed oh 100% I mean we we're just below 50% um all of a Freez and who runs that business has done an outstanding job not just in terms of what he's achieved operationally but how he markets it how he communicates to the market he's extremely popular he's he's one of I would say one of the best presented young geology CEOs that that I've ever come across he really is a a great guy and he's had a tremendous value um and of course we're extremely happy investor you know we don't pay any money towards it we know we exercised our warrants recently but you know we don't pay any of the bills that's all all of us shareholders and we're very happily enjoying the share price rise and our shareholders our shareholders I'm sure we'll see that value come through when this Market continues to pick up okay well that's certainly something I picked up this morning as well you know you said you're very bullish about the next few years and I think on the podcast you said the first or second Innings or the first 10 minutes of the football game if we're talking in in Europe so hopefully the start of a very uh bullish phase in the market just um thinking about other Investments you have Rick perhaps in the same model this Merchant banking model have you had any previous success any companies that you currently hold or held in the past that you can validate that Merchant banking model against um I mean Dundee was of course the most dramatic example there are not many public examples of that because successful Merchant banks are much more commonly private um my own activities as a private investment investor for 30 years probably constituted Merchant banking I wasn't particularly eager to share the spoils because I was doing the work um I have particip no not that's not true on the public side I haven't participated in any merant banks in the energy business but I've participated privately in four okay uh and they've done very well thank you okay right good good and good and Sean then where's the focus of the company at the moment then iFly Guardian meths is looking after itself now but where's the efforts of the company right now okay so two things really I just wanted to highlight as we as we close I think you know the power Arabia financing and those operations as I mentioned you know there are a huge array of opportunities there across nickel copper gold obviously which saudi's been very famous for but Platinum Rare Earth you know there's a whole Suite of energy transition metals available for exploration in Saudi Arab so we're putting a big effort into that we also have the upcoming IPO or First Development resources in Australia you know that's been quite tough because you know the markets have been tough you know the last two years and and that was uh you know it's an early stage exploration Play but um we're we're very we we continue to be very positive on on that one and very confident we're going to get that IPO into the market so those are really the two main things um that I would highlight at the moment and I think you know with with power Arabia in particular there's going to be a lot of news flow and there's going to be a lot to get people excited about the stock so I'm really excited about being able to say more over the coming months excellent and you're heading out to Rick's Symposium aren't you soon as we're looking forward to that very much so and we enjoyed it enormously last year uh and uh we're looking forward again to a very good conference again this year excellent good are you looking forward to it as well rck I guess you work your own conference isn't it so uh indeed I'm looking forward to the contribution of the Mining Journal at that conference we've tried to do joint ventures with various strategic partners for 28 years now and we're delighted to have you all uh as participants of the conference okay good and a final word on power longterm hold for you providing Sean continues to deliver sure I I mean my sort of rationale was the the way that you get on the ground floor is to create the ground floor at 71 years of age I'm too old to do that now so I'm allowing Sean to do it I had I had an opportunity shown to me last week that was a so-called ground floor opportunity at 30 cents Canadian and as I did some work uh I found that all the people that came in before me came in at 2.6 cents Canadian and they were acting as though a markup from 2.6 to 30 constituted a ground floor opportunity um that's not the same thing no okay okay well thank you very much sha Wade from power metal resources and Rick Ru for your time today here from the man General select in London if you enjoyed this interview then give us a thumbs up a like or a retweet subscribe to us on YouTube or follow us on Twitter and hit that notification Bell to be the first to know when we release new content there's loads of great content on our website too across all our programs at stockbox media.com thank you for watching [Music] [Music]