Copper-Silver Explorer Fits Veteran Investor's Golden Age of Mining Call

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1. Ownership and Share Structure Information

The information listed above was updated on the date this article was published and was compiled from information from the company and various other data providers.

• Veteran resource investor Bob Moriarty says mining is entering a "golden age," with copper and silver in shortage while gold has about 80 years of above-ground supply.
• Moriarty said the major miners stopped exploring and are now buying juniors that find big projects.
• Algo Grande Copper Corp.'s Adelita project in Sonora, Mexico, is a copper-silver-gold project in the Arizona-Sonora copper belt, putting it in the two metals Moriarty says are short.c
• Phase II hole AG-CG-PH2-002 returned 68.43 meters of copper-silver-gold mineralization across two zones, including 30.23 meters at 1.5% CuEq and a new zone of 38.20 meters at 1.0% CuEq.
• In September, the company closed a CA$4.79 million private placement and secured a five-year surface access agreement covering about 1,796 hectares at Adelita.
• Assays from Hole 3 are pending, and a ground gravity survey had been scheduled to begin on October 22 across a 7-kilometer corridor.
• S&P Global projects copper demand will rise 50% by 2040, with a supply shortfall of about 10 million metric tons.

Veteran resource investor Bob Moriarty of 321gold.com says mining is about to enter a "golden age," and the metals in shortest supply are copper and silver. In a recent interview with host Gary Bohm on the Metals and Miners podcast, the founder of 321gold said copper is "definitely in shortage" and silver is as well. Gold is not, he argued, because the world has about an 80-year supply of it sitting above ground.

Moriarty said the mining industry has been devastated over the last 20 years, and the major producers stopped exploring. Now, he said, those majors are starting to pick up juniors that are doing the exploration and finding big projects. Bohm noted that capital has largely stayed away from mining since 2011, leaving exploration budgets and new large discoveries at their lowest levels in decades, even as demand builds from AI, robotics, the military, and grid expansion.

Governments are stepping in to fill the gap. Bohm pointed out that the United States is now investing directly in mining companies. Moriarty said he welcomes the support, even though he generally opposes government involvement in the economy, and argued that miners would do far better if governments stopped standing in their way.

Moriarty covered a wide range of topics in the interview. Among his key points:

• Copper and silver are in shortage, but gold is not, thanks to decades of above-ground supply.
• Demand for silver from solar power, electronics, and the solid-state silver batteries Samsung Electronics Co. Ltd (005930:KRX) has developed could send the price sharply higher.
• The majors stopped exploring and are now buying juniors that find large projects.
• Only about 2% of the entire financial marketplace is in commodities, setting up a boom across everything from copper and silver to wheat and corn.
• There is no shortage of tungsten, but China controls the price by restricting exports, so companies that can reach production within two to three years should do well.
• Rare earth elements aren't actually rare, and the real bottleneck is processing them into usable metals.
• With U.S. debt at US$40 trillion and unlikely to be repaid, more inflation is unavoidable.

Moriarty believes the broader stock market is already in the early stages of a crash, driven by an AI bubble that he said is bursting. When margin calls hit, he said, investors sell what they can, not what they want to, and that will drag some of the best mining stocks down to absurdly low levels. He called it "the opportunity of a lifetime."

Gold and silver stocks will likely fall with the rest of the market, Moriarty said, but they will be the first to recover. He said he has never seen so many good companies with strong management and projects in demand selling so cheaply. Investors who already own them can ride it out, he said, while those holding cash should be ready to buy quality stocks at fair value.

Bohm added that efforts to reshore supply chains away from China are costly and are setting up competition for the same natural resources, which favors hard assets with pricing power. That could benefit North American projects close to the manufacturers that need the metals.

Moriarty didn't name any companies in the interview, but Algo Grande Copper Corp. (ALGR:TSXV; ALGRF:OTCPK; KM00:FSE) lines up with nearly every part of his argument. Start with the metals. Algo Grande's 100%-owned Adelita project in Sonora, Mexico, is "a district-scale, multisystem copper-silver-gold opportunity positioned in the prolific Arizona-Sonora copper belt," the company said in an August 11 release. That puts it squarely in the two metals Moriarty says are in shortage.

It's also the kind of company he expects the majors to come shopping for: a junior doing the exploration they've abandoned. Algo Grande's first drill program at the Cerro Grande skarn, four holes totaling 1,998 meters, confirmed what the company called "an outcropping, vertically extensive, multi-horizon skarn system," with "increasing evidence supporting a genetically related porphyry system at depth," according to its April 2 release. Porphyry systems are the source of most of the world's copper.

Location matters too. As the United States works to bring critical mineral supply chains closer to home, a copper-silver project in North America fits the reshoring push Bohm described.

Algo Grande began its Phase II program of about 8,000 meters in June. The program aims to expand the Cerro Grande discovery along a 2.5-kilometer corridor and to drill the Cerro Potrero South and Las Trancas targets for the first time.

In September, the company closed an oversubscribed private placement of 7,977,497 shares at CA$0.60 each for gross proceeds of about CA$4.79 million, money earmarked for continued drilling and exploration at Adelita.

The first Phase II assays came soon after. On September 11, the company reported that hole AG-CG-PH2-002 cut 30.23 meters grading 1.5% copper equivalent (CuEq), including 3.55 meters at 9.4% CuEq and 1.2 meters at 15.8% CuEq.

On September 23, deeper results from the same hole added a new zone of 38.20 meters at 1.0% CuEq, including 11.50 meters at 2.0% CuEq. That brings the hole's total to 68.43 meters of copper-silver-gold mineralization across two zones. All intervals are downhole lengths, and true widths haven't been determined.

On September 30, Algo Grande secured a five-year surface access agreement with the Ejido Palos Chinos community covering about 1,796 hectares at Adelita. The agreement allows mapping, sampling, geophysical surveys, and drilling through September 2031.

The next round of news is already in motion. Assays are pending from hole AG-CG-PH2-003, which intersected fault-hosted skarn with visible copper minerals at a target separate from Cerro Grande, the company said on October 7. The same release said core testing showed mineralized skarn is noticeably denser than the surrounding rock. Algo Grande plans to use that difference in a ground gravity survey, which was set to begin on October 22 across a 7-kilometer limestone corridor. The survey covers about 1,296 stations and should take 28 to 35 field days, with a final report expected about seven weeks after fieldwork ends.

The company also plans an induced polarization calibration test over known mineralization at Cerro Grande before extending that survey to new gravity targets. The results will help guide where the next phase of drilling goes.

"Magnetics finds the structure, gravity finds the weight, IP finds the charge," Chief Executive Officer Enrico Gay said.

Moriarty has followed Algo Grande since early on. In a September 14 commentary, written before the deeper Hole 2 results arrived, he pointed to the hole's high-grade 3.55-meter interval and said the drilling to date suggests the potential for a district-scale find.

"I have believed since I was first informed about the company that they had the potential for a giant discovery," he wrote, adding that the shares looked significantly undervalued.

He also noted that Sonora produces about 80% of Mexico's copper. "The world needs more copper. A great deal more," Moriarty wrote in a June 16 Streetwise Reports contributor opinion.

Artificial intelligence is adding to the demand for copper, which is already essential to electrification. In a January study, S&P Global projected that global demand will rise 50% to 42 million metric tons by 2040, with demand from AI data centers and from defense each roughly tripling. "The future availability of copper has become a matter of strategic importance," said study co-chair Carlos Pascual.

S&P Global projects global copper production to peak at 33 million metric tons in 2030, leaving a potential supply shortfall of about 10 million metric tons by 2040. The International Energy Agency's Global Critical Minerals Outlook 2026 projected primary supply will fall about 25% short of requirements by 2035. It said the near-term outlook had "worsened considerably" after disruptions cut 1.5 million tonnes of mine supply in 2025, Mining.com reported.

Copper hit a record US$14,875 per tonne on the London Metal Exchange on September 10, according to Fastmarkets. Because new mines take years to find, permit, and build, closing the gap will depend on new discoveries in stable jurisdictions.

The company's market cap was CA$30.19 million on October 9. It has 50.44 million shares outstanding, with a 52-week range of CA$0.35 to CA$1.00.

Institutions own 10.9% of shares, while management and insiders own 33.4%. The remainder is held by retail investors.

What did Bob Moriarty say about metal shortages?

In an interview on the Metals and Miners podcast, Moriarty said copper is "definitely in shortage," and silver is too. He said gold is not, because the world has about an 80-year supply above ground. He also said demand for silver from solar power, electronics, and solid-state batteries could send its price sharply higher.

Why does Moriarty think juniors stand to benefit?

He said the major producers stopped exploring over the last 20 years and are now buying junior companies that do the exploration and find big projects. He also expects a broad commodities boom, noting that only about 2% of the financial marketplace is invested in commodities.

How does Algo Grande fit his thesis?

Algo Grande is a junior explorer drilling a copper-silver-gold project in Sonora, which Moriarty noted produces about 80% of Mexico's copper. Its North American location also fits efforts to bring critical mineral supply chains closer to home.

What are Algo Grande's latest drill results?

Hole AG-CG-PH2-002 cut 30.23 meters at 1.5% CuEq, including 3.55 meters at 9.4% CuEq, plus a deeper zone of 38.20 meters at 1.0% CuEq. That's 68.43 meters of mineralization in total. Intervals are downhole lengths, and true widths haven't been determined.

What's next for the company?

Assays are pending from Hole 3, which hit skarn with visible copper minerals at a separate target. A ground gravity survey had been scheduled to begin October 22, with a final report expected about seven weeks after fieldwork ends. The company also plans an induced polarization calibration test to help guide its next phase of drilling.

What does Moriarty think of Algo Grande?

In a September 14 commentary, Moriarty said he has believed since he first learned about the company that it had the potential for a giant discovery, and that its shares looked significantly undervalued.

Why is copper demand rising?

S&P Global expects AI data centers and defense to each roughly triple their copper demand by 2040, while mine production peaks in 2030. The International Energy Agency projects primary copper supply will fall about 25% short of requirements by 2035.