I politely disagree - although the recent RC drill results aren't mind blowing they are reasonably high grade near surface gold intercepts that add some strike extent to previous drilling so for AMG I think that they are material.
I can see that others are speculating on the 8 deep holes drilled by NCM, of course its unlikely that they are all mineralized (you never get 8 hits out of 8 on an early deep exploration program) and there will be a few hits, near-misses and misses.
Its just a guess but maybe NCM were worried that AMG would somehow publicly pre-empt the results that NCM have been getting at the Canteen IOCG target - which would be annoying and inconvenient to NCM because if they are really onto something good then it would ignite a whole bunch of nearology speculation, and if the results were underwhelming then it would be embarrassing for NCM because they have identified it as one of their key "search spaces" in Australia and it would look like a dud. If you think about it - I can't see any data that AMG have that isn't already publicly available that would be useful to NCM except maybe the results and data of the SAM survey? As I said - just guessing at this point and still seems silly because that's exactly what NDA's are drafted for....
I think its worth highlighting that the NCM exploration geology people would have a very rigorous and multi-pronged exploration strategy that would be constantly refined and iterative and more "scientific" than AMG's approach of taking the rig around drilling under historical pits and shafts. They are after a specific target and are not looking for shallow high grade small beer tonnage stuff - they would be under instructions and direction that they are only looking for a Tick Hill or an Ernest Henry style ore body and anything less than that is unsuitable for NCM's ideal "portfolio" of assets.
Both exploration strategies are valid and work for their respective companies
