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Regis cleansed after tough 18 months
Tuesday, 4 August 2015
Kristie Batten


REGIS Resources managing director Mark Clark says the company has put its issues behind it and is now focused on growth through exploration and acquisitions.

The one-time darling of the Australian gold sector, Regis suffered a series of setbacks early last year, including flooding at its flagship Duketon project and grade reconciliation issues at Duketon’s biggest mine, Garden Well.


Speaking on the sidelines of Diggers & Dealers 2015 in Kalgoorlie today, Clark admitted it had been a challenging time for the company but the issues were behind it.


“In spite of all that, the business has always been strongly cash positive and I think it's been more about us getting a really good handle on what was happening at Garden Well,” Clark said.


“Until such time that you get a handle yourself on where you're at, it's very difficult to sort of explain that to the broader market and investment community. “Now that we’ve got our paper cleansed in terms of where we’re going with Garden Well, it’s much easier to talk more freely about where we’re going because we have much better clarity ourselves.”


Clark also acknowledged the criticism Regis has received in the past for not communicating with investors and the media.


“Ultimately though it’s not a popularity contest, it’s about getting the runs on the board,” he said.


“If we deliver the runs on the board over time, which has been our history – people forget we’ve been at Equigold and Samantha Gold in the case of our chairman [Nick Giorgetta] and others on our board, so it’s been a 30-year journey where we’ve been extremely successful over a long period of time.


“That’s never been a success based on talking ourselves up, that’s a success that’s been based on putting the runs on the board through our operations. That will always be our modus operandi.”


There has been a flurry of M&A activity in the gold sector of late and Clark admitted Regis had been involved in bids for some assets.


“We just haven't been able to get there on a value basis and probably to some extent, until we cleansed the market with our recent updates, we probably weren't in a position to aggressively use our paper to grow anyway,” he said.


“We are looking aggressively and I'm sure a lot of others are but we just have to be patient and stick to our principles and have confidence that in due course something will cross our desk that'll make sense.”


Two deals that have made sense for Regis are the recent $A1.5 million acquisition of the Gloster gold deposit and an exploration joint venture with Duketon Mining, both of which could add value to the Duketon operations.


Clark said it was “win-win” deals like these that made sense for Regis.


“Theres other potential for that sort of deal in the district,” he said.


Regis plans to spend $10-15 million on exploration in the Duketon region this financial year.


“Obviously that will be partly dependent on success - if we keep finding more opportunities then we’ll spend more,” Clark said.


Regis shares fell 1% to $1.277.