Greetings Degenerate Contrarian,

This is The Next Big Rush, your daily drop of mining/energy news. Where we come together and get ready for the big wave. 🌊

Ride on these:

🏄🏼‍♂️ More Uranium M&A

🏄🏼‍♂️ C$1.5b Project

🏄🏼‍♂️ Pounds In The Athabasca

🏄🏼‍♂️ F3 Added to ETF

🏆 Consolidated Uranium Buys Virginia Energy

Consolidated Uranium (TSXV:CUR) (OTCQB: CURUF), a diversified uranium junior with projects in various jurisdictions, has completed the previously proposed purchase of Virginia Energy Resources (TSXV: VUI).

Consolidated Uranium has acquired 100% of the issued and outstanding Virginia Energy Shares not already held by Consolidated Uranium and Virginia Energy shareholders, other than Consolidated Uranium, are entitled to receive 0.26 of a common share of Consolidated Uranium (worth C$0.485 today).

Virginia is trading at C$0.475, leaving very little room for arbitrage.

The deal was first announced in mid-November and approved by shareholders.

The Company holds a 100% controlling interest in the advanced stage Coles Hill uranium project located in south central Virginia, USA, containing 132m lbs indicated and at 0.05% U3O8 and 30mlbs inferred at 0.04%.

You noticed the M&A activity in the US? (Scratches non-existing goatee…)

😎 C$1.5b NPV Announced by Discovery

Discovery Silver Corp. (TSX-V: DSV, OTCQX: DSVSF) has just come out with news of a Preliminary Feasibility Study (PFS) on its 100%-owned Cordero silver project in Chihuahua State, Mexico. The PFS project team was led by Ausenco, and here are a few things we find intriguing:

The company is reporting numbers in USD, which makes them seem smaller than in CAD at first glance but since the company is listed in both Canada and the US, we will assume the intention is to cater to that audience.

NPV5% $1.2b USD/ $1.5b CAD - quite the number for a $490m CAD market cap company. What is a bit too loose is the 5% discount rate in our opinion. In a (still) high interest rate environment where government bonds are nearing 4%, nobody in their right mind would say a 5% discount rate would make up for the risk in a mining operation, specially at PFS stage. There are other redeeming factors though, such as:

IRR 28% - a rule of thumb for some investors is 20% at feasibility. Getting there.

Price assumptions : Ag - $22.00/oz, Au - $1,600/oz, Pb - $1.00/lb and Zn - $1.20/lb - don’t know about you but we think these are quite good, if not conservative.

Initial capex of $455m, while NPV is about 2.5x. Some investors believe when capex > NPV, the project isn’t worth it, even though the NPV already takes capex into account. We cannot explain how this belief started, but you will get scoffs from old-timers otherwise.

All around the numbers look good on the surface.

✌🏼UEC With Another Resource In The Athabasca

After acquiring UEX in the summer of 2022, Uranium Energy Corp is now announcing a resource for the second project unders the acquisition, the Horseshoe-Raven Project (gotta love these names).

Highlights are : Indicated resources are 37.43 million lb. U3O8 with 23.59 million lb. U3O8 at 0.215% U3O8 at the Horseshoe Deposit and 13.83 million lb. U3O8 at 0.177% U3O8 at the Raven Deposit.

Close to infrastructure: about 5 km from Cameco's mill at Rabbit Lake.

Engineering: It’s hosted in basement rocks with no sandstone cover and is between 100 m and 450 m below the surface, suggesting that the deposit is potentially amenable to a combination of open pit and underground mining and should not require costly ground freezing.

The previous resource announcement was pertaining to Shea Creek (UEC attributable share of combined resources are 46.95 million lb. U3O8, with of 33.18m lb indicated and 13.78m lb inferred).

F3 Added to URA

Client Company and sponsor of this amazing newsletter, Fission 3.0 (TSXV: FUU) (OTCQB: FISOF) (FSE:2F3A) has been announced as an addition to the Solactive Index, from the 1st of February 2023. Solactive makes up the URA ETF. Fission 3.0 Corp is a uranium project generator and property bank company with a recent ultra-high grade discovery in the Athabasca Basin.

Congrats, guys!

Meme of The Day

Woop woop! Things are warming up. Unless you live in Manitoba. Then things are still pretty darn cold.

The Editor

DISCLAIMER: None of this is financial advice. This newsletter is strictly educational and is not investment advice or a solicitation to buy or sell any assets or to make any financial decisions. Please be careful and do your own research.