Interview with Philippe Cloutier, President & CEO of Cartier Resources Inc. (TSX-V: ECR)

Many juniors have less than Cartier Resources (TSX-V: ECR), but they are worth 3x as times as much...

Cartier Resources, listed on the TSX-V in 2007, is an exploration & development company focused on discovery in the 'prolific' Abitibi Gold Belt in Québec. Cartier Resources has 7 projects spread across Quebec that it acquired from 2012 to 2015. The flagship project, Chimo Mine, is the current focus, while the other projects have been parked for now. Cartier Resources thinks it is 6-months away from making a decision to possibly sell the mine, which could result in a big return for shareholders.

In 2012, Cartier Resources decided to go on an aggressive shopping spree to pick up high-quality, discounted assets from the many struggling mineral exploration companies in the region. In the Abitibi, from 2002-2012, there were lots of exciting, but expensive, exploration discoveries in remote areas: frontier exploration. No less than 10 deposits that were drilled, delineated, permitted and brought into production. The common denominator? None of the projects were new discoveries: all were old projects that had been shelved because of bad economic situations or corporate decisions. These things were sitting ducks, and this is what Cloutier calls renaissance exploration. The acquisition profile was to seek out struggling junior mining companies and pick up their assets. Agnico Eagle clocked onto this "signature acquisition programme" by 2016, and purchased 22,500,000 common shares for C$4.5M. Cartier decided to focus solely on projects that have previously been discovered and developed, rather than looking at more exotic exploration. Chimo is the focus because it has good existing mining infrastructure.

Cartier Resources has been drilling at Chimo since 2017. The mine has 4,000 historic drill holes: a "huge 60,000 data set of assay results." Cartier Resources likes to be held accountable to the data. He claims while retail investors aren't the biggest fans of this, institutional investors like it a lot. The company has brought all of the drill data up to date, completed 116 diamond drill holes and 54,000m of drilling within a 500m radius of the known infrastructures, at depth and laterally. Cartier Resources then published a maiden resource estimate and will produce a second resource estimate on the shallow northern and southern shears in the next few weeks.

When combined with the Central Corridor resource estimate from last November, the Chimo Mine property now hosts a total of 4Mt indicated, grading 4.53g/t gold containing 585,190oz and combined inferred resources of 4.9Mt at 3.82g/t gold for a total of 597,800 gold oz. It's clear that Cartier Resources has been undervalued by the market, but is this because of the focus on institutional investors? Short term, it seems clear that Cartier might suffer. The company is focussing on robustness, rather than "sex and sizzle." In the long-term, there could be a payoff for smart investors who spot the value discrepancy.

The end goal is to prove Cartier Resources' exploration model. The team has not "threatened" to build the mine, and will decide the most appropriate way to reward shareholders. Cloutier is pragmatic and recognises it is a giant leap to go from development/de-risking to construction and eventual production.

What is the plan for the other 3 assets? Benoist is the next priority. The team has already launched an assessment of the resources in place. If Chimo is a success, expect a rinse and repeat approach. The cash position? $6M in the bank: $5M hard cash and $1M flow-through money. The burn rate when not drilling is C$50,000 per month. Even a severe bear market/crisis wouldn't stop Cartier Resources' strategy. Cloutier himself has 191M share with 0 warrants and 13M options.

What did you make of Philippe Cloutier?

Company page: https://ressourcescartier.com/

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