NOU-V brokeout Friday. The company must drill four targets over the next 18 months and make token cash and stock payments to earn a 75-per-cent interest in the Waasikusuu diamond project, southeast of James Bay in Quebec. It can acquire the rest through staged payments of $2.5-million.
Mr. Desaulniers, president and CEO, who has unsuccessfully promoted rare earth and graphite plays since he launched the company in 2012, touts the "more than 35 years of diamond exploration experience" held by Nouveau Monde's directors and consultants. It is a common but meaningless ploy -- most kindergarten classrooms have over 100 years of life experience after all -- but it is also unnecessary: one director, Jacques Letendre, accounts for nearly all that experience. Mr. Letendre, who joined De Beers in the early 1980s and then became a consulting geologist, began promoting diamond explorers in the early 2000s. (His Majescor Resources Inc. (MJX: $0.04) flamed out in the mid-2000s so Mr. Letendre returned to his consulting career.)
The Waasikusuu project is a continuation of one of Majescor's failed hunts. It lies up-ice of where Mr. Letendre discovered arrays of kimberlite indicator minerals in the mid-2000s but was never able to track them to a source. Mr. Letendre can tell a compelling story and he apparently sold Mr. Desaulniers and the rest of Nouveau Monde's board -- who perhaps average a few months of diamond experience between them -- on the story. Mr. Desaulniers, whose diamond exploration experience seems limited to prowling shopping malls, believes that Nouveau Monde has a great opportunity of making a major kimberlite field discovery "for a minor amount of money wisely invested in geophysics and exploration drilling." (Majescor spent considerable sums on geophysics and drilling and found nothing, but Mr. Letendre is undoubtedly the wiser for trying.) |
