Please click on the link below to view the Kodiak Exploration article
published in The Vancouver Sun on Wednesday, December 19, 2007.
For your convenience, the article is also posted below.
Shares in Kodiak Exploration soar on results from Ontario drilling
BY Scott Simpson, Vancouver Sun
Published: Wednesday, December 19, 2007
VANCOUVER - Eye-catching drill results on a gold property in northwestern
Ontario have jolted market interest in a Vancouver-based junior mining company.
Shares of Kodiak Exploration have increased in value more than nine-fold on
the TSX Venture Exchange since September on the basis of a series of promising
drill and dig results on a sprawling property near Thunder Bay.
To date, the company, with a market cap of $350 million, has attracted no
coverage from analysts - but its apparent prospects were sufficient to attract
almost $54 million in bought-deal financing last month.
Kodiak insiders purchased about $5 million worth of the private placement,
the company said at the time, while noting that the original plan was to raise
$40 million, but demand was greater than anticipated.
It was backed by a syndicate of institutions including National Bank, RBC,
CIBC, Cormark (Sprott) Securities, Raymond James and Paradigm Capital. The
company's stock was trading at 37 cents in late July, and now sits at more than
$4, with 80 million shares on the public market.
The reason for the interest is a series of exploration results that are
prompting Kodiak to claim that it has "a very significant new gold
discovery."
The company is still in the initial stages of mapping out its property, and
has yet to produce a scoping study or other detailed engineering work which
would establish whether or not it has a resource that can be profitably mined.
Records on file with Canadian Securities Administrators show that Kodiak
president Bill Chornobay obtained 700,000 options at 55 cents apiece in September
- on top of 1.8 million options previously granted - and is hanging onto them.
Company director George Richardson has been scooping up shares on the public
market - almost 900,000 since October at prices ranging from 86 cents to $4.20
- and has more shares than he did at the start of the year.
Gold concentrations in drill results and channel samples run from a low of
one gram of gold per tonne of material, to 515 grams, or 15 ounces, per tonne.
Other mines in the same area have been very profitable at an average of about
seven grams per tonne.
Kodiak has also been acquiring property in the immediate vicinity from
prospectors, and now controls an area of 1,400 square kilometres, according to
Chornobay.
"Every drill hole drilled to date has intercepted gold
mineralization," Chornobay said.
He said Kodiak first ventured into the area, known as the the
Beardmore-Geraldton greenstone belt, a few years ago.
Past mines there have produced 4.1 million ounces of gold.
"In the last 18 years only $15 million had been spent and five of that
was spent by us.
"The biggest problem with the area was heavy bush, overburden cover to
a depth anywhere from a metre to several metres, so not a lot of outcrop - and
it's harder to find things if they're not outcropping.
"We have one of the veins which is referred to as the Golden Mile that
has been exposed continuously for two kilometres. The average width of the vein
is about four metres wide, the average grade along a 400-metre section of that
vein is 20.2 grams [per tonne]."
ssimpson@png.canwest.com
If you have any questions or comments, please do not
hesitate to contact me at 604-688-9006.
Sincerely,
Kasia Ochnio
Assistant Corporate Communications
#1205 - 700 West Pender Street
Vancouver, BC V6C 1G8
Toll Free: 888.688.9006
Ph: 604.688.9006
Fx: 604.688.9029
TSX-V: KXL
www.kodiakexp.com