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TMAC strikes gold in Hope Bay
Company considers public offering as interest from investors grows

Stewart Burnett
Northern News Services
Published Monday, February 9, 2015

NUNAVUT
TMAC Resources has significantly upped its measured, indicated and inferred resources of gold at its Hope Bay property in Nunavut.

NNSL photo/graphic

An overhead view of TMAC Resources’ Hope Bay project shows the company’s large property in Nunavut. TMAC has significantly increased its resource estimations for gold potential at this location. - photo courtesy of TMAC Resources

The company announced late January a 59 per cent increase in its measured and indicated resources at Hope Bay, putting the new figure at 4.4 million ounces of gold.

Its inferred resources at that location are now up to 1.19 million ounces of gold. These increases are based on the 2013 Hope Bay Preliminary Economic Assessment.

TMAC's 2014 exploration program included an increase of more than 600,000 ounces of gold contained within the measured and inferred resource categories at its Doris zone, and more than 750,000 ounces of gold contained within the measured and inferred resource category at Madrid North. Respectively, these represent 229 and 51 per cent increases from the preliminary economic assessment.

"We achieved two major accomplishments during the 2014 drill campaign," said Catharine Farrow, TMAC's chief executive officer in a news release on the findings.

"The first one dispels the concern that Doris, although extremely high grade, might not have continuity and might not be able to support a long mine life."

She said the measured resource at Doris of 443,000 tonnes grading 21.7 grams per ton of gold is expected to provide exceptionally high grade ore for the first several years of mining at Hope Bay.

Farrow said the company has been working with a $1,300 gold price for its internal models concerning feasibility.

She said bringing TMAC public is an option the company is seriously considering.

"There are benefits to staying private and certainly there are potential investors who are interested in (going public)," said Farrow.

We do have a lot of interest from people who would like to see us go public and we are exploring that option in detail right now."

Going public will be determined by where the market is in the coming months, she said.

"The gold space has shown some pretty interesting signs of life since 2015 broke and it's certainly encouraging right now. We're getting a lot of interest. People are excited about the potential if that uptick continues for TMAC and becoming interested in participating in anything that we should - subject to marketability - do in the public space."

If the company does a full Initial Public Offering (IPO), it would likely happen late in the second quarter of 2015, depending on how markets perform.

"We have existing major shareholders and there are some others interested in getting into investing in TMAC who would like to see it remain private and give us breathing room so we don't have to worry about the market so much," added Farrow. "That is another option available to us and we're exploring that with a number of interested parties and we're also looking at debt options."

She said TMAC's current shareholders have held strong with us when other people were not investing at all in the metals industry and we certainly want to do the right thing by existing shareholders and not see them suffer nasty dilution. Among other projects, it is developing the Hope Bay Greenstone Belt in Nunavut as Canada's next major gold mining camp.

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