Canada Nickel (CNC) - 1st Birthday for Nickel's Best Stock 2020

Canada Nickel continues to advance the next generation of high quality, high potential Nickel-Cobalt projects to deliver the metals needed to power the electric vehicle revolution and feed the high growth stainless steel market. The Company possesses industry-leading Nickel expertise and is focused on low-risk well-established mining jurisdictions.

We caught up with Mark Selby, CEO of Canada Nickel which has been trading publicly for 12 months and it has been a very busy year for the company.  Starting at CAD$0.25, they have been as high as CAD$4.00 and now about CAD$3.50. Their shareholders must be quite pleased with their progress so far.

Happy Birthday to Canada Nickel! A Look at the Year & Achievements Made 

The shareholders who got in at CAD$0.25, including most of the Canada Nickel management team have been very happy with the performance to date.  They set out a year ago to aggressively advance their Crawford Nickel project and have been able to drive it forward successfully.  

Canada Nickel was formed from an agreement with 3 separate entities, Noble Mineral Exploration, Spruce Ridge Resources and the three private investors who had approached Mark Selby to join them initially. They had a very small team as they started drilling, the first 4 holes came back as expected and they were able to get some key people on board to advance the project as much as possible.

Accelerated Time frame: Strategy, Planning, & Fund Allocation 

Canada Nickel was keen to advance the Crawford project on an accelerated time frame. They set out the drilling to get the minimum they needed to be able to deliver the kind of resource that they wanted, which was by the end of February.  From first drilling to 12th largest Nickel Sulphide resource was 6 months and on a CAD$6.5M budget. CAD$2M of this was involved in buying the asset to be able to take the royalty load on the property down to 2%.  They are now close to completing the PEA in less than 2 years from first drilling which is certainly an accelerated time frame for a brand-new greenfield project.  

They wanted to be really confident in terms of what they had and then had their first financial model for the deposit after just 6 weeks as there was enough information to start to scale it up. There is 900m of confirmed continuous mineralisation down below the resource and they were able to confirm early on that the geophysics and the drilling boundary were lined up.  

Once they get to pre-feasibility and do the next raise they will spend more time defining the geological boundaries but in terms of getting the initial resource done, they plan to stay on the inside and keep those metres focussed on the highest part of the resource. 

Canada Nickel has raised a total of CAD$25M and still have a third of that in the bank and so with just over CAD$16M they've delivered what is the eighth largest resource in the world already and they are close to the initial PEA and a Feasibility Study by the end of this year. 

The Nickel market has completely moved with Canada Nickel during the 16-month timeframe and they need to continue to move aggressively while the light is shining on Nickel because you never know when it might turn into a down period for 12-months.  They were lucky that after Covid, the sector has rebounded very quickly and with Nickel at almost CAD$8/lb it's a good place to be for the company. 

There were initial delays in getting listed for Canada Nickel as they had expected to be listed in December and had laid out a whole series of work that would generate good news flow, post listing and were expecting to raise money in February after 2 or 3 months of good news flow and a resource on the horizon.  What actually happened was that the company went public and then the next day put out a resource and 2 months-worth of news flow and then a week later Covid hit with the shutdowns that followed. They had the momentum in the project but didn't have any public momentum and came out of the gate and went sideways for a bit.  With help from existing shareholders they were able to raise the next tranche of money to be able to keep moving the project forward and then came back, the market came back and they were able to move forward.  

As the year went on the EV thematic and the Nickel story was becoming more clear in focus so it made sense to keep pushing as hard as possible because the size of the prize is getting a project ready for what could be a Nickel super-cycle, possibly coming in the middle part of this decade. It was worth a little extra dilution to get the money to keep the project momentum going forward for the company.  Canada Nickel has also tried to be as transparent as possible in terms of milestones and there is a benefit of keeping those lines of communication open as much as possible.

Growth from Now On: 2021 Timeline & Deliverables

Covid could still slow things down but they are largely on track to be able to meet their goals of the PEA and the Feasibility study and unlock a huge amount of value.  They could have waited to do the PEA until the resource was twice as large but they already have 900Mt of Resource and the numbers will get even better because they expect a substantial increase in that Resource given the drilling they’ve been doing since the last Resource came out and when they go to the Feasibility Study.  They will have a lot of de-risking around the project itself and they have the five option properties too. 

It has been a great 12 months for Canada Nickel and the goal going forward is to unlock the exploration potential in a way that makes sense for the shareholders. If things keep going in the right direction for Nickel it will be really exciting for Canada Nickel this year.  

To find out more, go to Canada Nickel's Website.