Amex Exploration Answers Its Resource-Estimate Dip With a Ramp, a Bulk Sample, and New Gold at Perron

Amex Exploration answered the valuation hit from its first resource estimate with a production plan — and a new discovery at Perron suggests the project is bigger than that estimate showed. That is the case the host of CEO.ca's Lab Report builds in his September 10, 2026 deep dive, which pairs the headline "Amex makes new discovery at Perron, the Rose zone, approximately 165 meters below fully financed ramp development" with the story of a stock that recovered from about 80 cents to nearly $5.

## Why the resource estimate hit the stock so hard

The host says Amex's shares were "hammered" down to around 80 cents after the company published its resource estimate. His explanation is methodological, not fundamental.

Under National Instrument 43-101 (NI 43-101 — the Canadian rules that govern how mineral resources are estimated and disclosed) and the CIM guidelines (from the Canadian Institute of Mining, Metallurgy and Petroleum), the modelers who build an estimate must stay conservative. In a disseminated deposit — one where gold is spread fairly evenly through the rock — they can justify filling the space between widely spaced drill holes with modeled blocks, because the surrounding holes show the grade is continuous. In a high-grade vein system they cannot. The modeler allows only about two one-metre blocks on either side of each drill intersection, and caps extreme grades, because there are not enough data points to show the high grade continues outward.

The result, he argues, is that a high-grade deposit's first estimate never reflects what the drill holes imply. The market sees a smaller, lower-grade number than it expected and sells the stock.

## The countermove: build the ramp once, use it twice

What impressed the host is how quickly Amex moved. As the resource estimate was finished, the company went straight into a preliminary economic assessment (PEA — an early, approximate study of whether a mine can work economically) and publicized a plan for near-term production.

The first step is a 40,000-tonne bulk sample — mining a real block of ore — from near the top of the system, where the average grade runs about half an ounce per tonne. His arithmetic: roughly 20,000 ounces in that sample. Because the plan uses a ramp (an inclined tunnel) and underground workings built at full mining size, the company spends the development money once. The bulk sample runs through the same infrastructure that the first phase of mining at the Champagne zone, a high-grade vein, will use afterward. That, he says, brings $60 million of the $195 million phase one capital cost forward. He adds that "the other 20,000 ounces" could cover most of the rest of phase one's cost.

By his telling, the market noticed: the shares climbed from about 80 cents to almost $5.

## The new Rose zone hits

The new discovery sits in fairly close proximity to the planned underground workings. Amex reports the Rose zone at 8 grams per tonne (g/t) gold over 4.3 metres — rock the host calculates at roughly $1,000 per tonne of contained gold, and wide enough, in his view, to mine without difficulty. The intercept includes 24 g/t gold over 1.15 metres at a vertical depth of 210 metres, very close to the ramp, which he notes would let the company build drill stations and reach the 210-metre level and below with ease.

Deeper results point the same way, he says: 11.78 g/t gold over 1.8 metres at 290 metres of vertical depth, and 11 g/t gold over 1.2 metres at 280 metres. To him, that is evidence the team intends to test well below the initial ramp horizon.

## Why he thinks Perron keeps growing

The host's conviction rests on scale. Within a radius of roughly 1,000 metres, he says, Amex holds seven or eight deposits in its resource that need considerably more drilling — and the whole system could be connected. Drawing on Abitibi history, where ten-year mine plans routinely stretch into decades, he expects Perron to be mined for more than one decade.

On value, he notes the company trades below half a billion dollars and argues the market pays far more for high-grade projects on a path to 100,000-plus ounces at mining costs under $1,000 per ounce. He cites $2 billion valuations for comparable companies, and floats a $5 billion-plus scenario if Perron keeps expanding up the right side of the Lassonde Curve (a widely used chart of how mining valuations peak on discovery, sag through development, and climb again toward production). These are his projections, contingent on more drilling, studies, and mine development.

## The setup investors should weigh

For the host, Amex is unusual because it has both sides of the Lassonde Curve working at once: development-stage progress — the ramp the headline calls fully financed, the bulk sample, the phase one plan — plus discovery-stage upside from new zones like the Rose. The markers to watch, per the video, are bulk-sample execution, follow-up drilling at the Rose zone and at depth, and resource updates as infill drilling adds the data points that let modelers take the conservatisms out.