#103 Digging for Dollars #31 Tom Woolrych's Framework for Finding Tier 1 Wins

CEO.CA Jun 11, 2026 41:54

Summary

Geologist-turned-fund manager Tom Woolrych argues the only real edge in discovery-stage juniors is knowing exactly what you own.

He adds the commodity's place in the bull or bear cycle as a third dimension to the Lassonde curve, mapping funding needs to discovery stages.

A 17km porphyry holding billions of tonnes makes even 0.5 grams per tonne interesting; he sees 5-10 million ounces at San Lorenzo.

San Lorenzo is held for tier-one intercept potential; Hercules Metals is held because a 400-500Mt US copper project trades cheaply.

Deutsche Rohstoff holds a very large position in Q2 Metals, whose 300Mt Quebec lithium project is why Canaccord's Tim Hoff calls it 'tier X'.

Woolrych says he became more bullish after roughly five to seven holes, when he saw economic-type mineralization rather than isolated showings, and modelled it himself in Leapfrog.
He expects the company could define 400-500 million tonnes at about 0.5% copper, and says a PEA or scoping study around that number would satisfy the institutional investors he calls the spreadsheet miners.
The host contrasts the intercepts, citing a 2023 Beaver Creek result of 186 m at 0.86% copper inside a silver epithermal belt, with the limited market love, at a market cap Woolrych puts at about $185 million.
Woolrych says he is still very bullish and likes the way management is now framing Southern Flats, where a hole is being drilled along the vector indicated by the earlier work.

Tom Woolrych says he is not selling and treats the company as a tier 1 story, arguing the intercepts point to more than one tier 1 zone rather than a single good shoot.
He describes a system with gold and copper across roughly 17 km and sees easily 5 million, possibly 10 million, ounces, adding that the number could end up looking small.
The hosts note the market cap reached about $600 million after huge holes were drilled 6 km apart, and Woolrych flags a $250 share lock-up expiring in about a month as an overhang that created the pullback.
Chris Paul says the panel first heard about the company about six months ago from Woolrych, went in, was cut back by a financing, played anyway, and has watched it re-rate since.
Woolrych places it in the pre-discovery to discovery stage, against a more advanced Hercules, and says San Lorenzo is held for tier 1 potential while Hercules is held because it is cheap and good.

It is one of the newly listed names the panel brought in and dug on the basis that it already owns it.
The Beacon group raised about $16 million for the company and it has just listed under the ticker JAY, with the hosts noting very few people know it.
One host says the grade is the interesting part and that the historical resource was still verified by a 43-101 about two years ago, so the current estimate is more up to date than it first looks.
Woolrych says he knows nothing about the company and will pull the data and build his own model before taking a view.

Top takeaway He brought San Lorenzo to the panel about six months ago on Woolrych's tip, went in, was cut back by a financing, played anyway, and has watched it reach about a $600 million market cap after huge holes drilled 6 km apart.
Woolrych credits him with drilling all of Hercules' holes and proving out tonnage in a new district, with a current hole at Southern Flats being aimed along the vector the earlier work indicates.
He picked San Lorenzo over Andina Copper from the two GeoAlpha ideas Woolrych handed him, because of the drill intercepts and the infrastructure.
In his own pitch he led with the story and spent the rest of it criticising management, saying on another podcast the hits are good but the company is not institutional and you cannot really buy the fund.
He says he became CEO there only because the owner of about 30% of the shares was holding the bags, and notes that owner has since made another couple of hundred million dollars on San Lorenzo.

Top takeaway Woolrych quotes him on the way drawdowns work in the sector, that all these 10 baggers had multiple 50% drawdowns, and uses it to argue the current weakness in discovery stocks is a buying opportunity.
He also repeats the advice of knowing what you own: do the due diligence, understand the geology and the drilling, then hold through weakness instead of selling into it.

Top takeaway His filter is tier 1 potential: he only wants projects that can become mines, and argues large copper porphyries eventually attract bids from majors because they contain a lot of metal.
He adds a third dimension to the Lassonde curve, the place of the underlying commodity in its bull or bear cycle, and uses it to decide when to buy, when to sell and how big a position to take.
He screens on intercept length, looking for 500 to 1,000-plus metres of contained metal before studying the geometry, and warns that narrow branches can deliver high grades without ever giving enough tonnage.
He builds his own quick-and-dirty resource models in Leapfrog to work out contained metal, then lets the spreadsheet investors backstop the valuation off that number.
He says the fund was deliberately repositioned toward South America, in Peru, Colombia, Bolivia and Venezuela, on a change of regime in the region, while keeping a strong gold bias alongside a copper bias.