No @raymon68 - I don't follow Torque Metals (TOR) or have any info about them I can share. I do note they have a small 3 person Board that includes Evan Cranston and that name rings a bell - I have come across him at various times when he and one or two of his mates have come in and taken over distressed projects, sometimes rolled existing Boards and installed themselves and their mates, and generally made money by picking up assets at firesale prices or taking over control of assets or companies at opportunistic times. All business. Nothing illegal. But I have sometimes been a shareholder before Evan and Co. moved in and it sometimes doesn't end well - for the likes of me and other ordinary shareholders; often there's a recapitalisation that dilutes prior shareholders into oblivion, i.e. you lose all or close enough to 100% of your investment.

My last encounter with Mr Cranston would likely have been when I was a shareholder in New Century Zinc. Not a wealth winner for me.

ChatGPT tells me that Evan Cranston, a former corporate lawyer and now mining executive, leads Konkera Corporate, providing advisory and transaction support to ASX-listed resource firms. He’s noted for playing instrumental roles in recapitalisations, asset acquisitions, and turnarounds of distressed firms.

Some notable transactions he has been linked to include:

• The Bellevue Gold project acquisition by Draig Resources
• The Century Mine acquisition via New Century Zinc
• The Honeymoon Uranium Project deal involving Boss Resources
• Vital Metals’ acquisition of rare‑earth developer Cheetah Resources

In these cases, he helped restructure balance sheets, deploy capital, and re-position the projects for future value—classic signs of managing distressed or underperforming companies, especially in the mining space.

So, perhaps he's a good man to have on your Board if your company has a strong balance sheet and is not distressed, but he's an orange flag for me personally, just based on my own past experience with companies that he's been involved with.

But other than that vague partial knowledge about one Board member, I know nothing about TOR, sorry.

I will just add however, as a very general observation, that I used to get excited about high grade gold hits in drilling results, but I've since learned that there's a hell of a lot more to check out with a gold explorer than just what their grades are in their drill cores. It's 1:30am and I have to be up early and have a busy day tomorrow, so I won't elaborate any further now, but just in terms of gold, ideally you want good grades in oxidized ore (or similar) where liberating the gold is relatively easy and straightforward, and you want that gold to be close to surface and there to be plenty of it. If it's deeper, you need even more gold to be there to make it worthwhile. In this case, they've just reported good grades from a couple of holes, but they're 380 metres vertical depth - below surface.

In Australian gold mining, the typical economic depth limit for an open pit mine before transitioning to underground mining is generally around 200 to 300 metres below surface. Although there are rare exception where the sheer amount of gold allows for a much larger and therefore deeper pit, like the Kalgoorlie Super Pit (KCGM owned by NST) which is around 600m deep.

At ~200–300m, the stripping ratio (waste to ore) often becomes uneconomic, wall stability becomes more difficult and costly to manage as pits go deeper, and haulage costs increase dramatically with depth due to longer truck cycles. Also, environmental and permitting constraints can make larger, deeper pits problematic.

However, perhaps TOR's Paris Gold Project is going to end up being an underground gold mine. Genesis' Gwalia mine is now approaching 2 kilometres vertical depth and is the largest underground gold mine in Australia, and it's been profitable for decades. Underground mining is more expensive than open pit mining and involves a lot more capex, so the grades generally need to be higher for underground gold mining to be economically viable.

All I'm saying, without looking at more than the first couple of lines of their latest announcement, is that it's best not to get too carried away by high grades. Depth also matters. As does the project's location, access to infrastructure, proximity to existing gold mills, all of that stuff, but most importantly of all, how much gold is there, and that can take years to work out through many millions of dollars worth of drilling, sometimes hundreds of millions of dollars worth of drilling.

They can have a massive SP spike on good gold hits, but for the higher share price to remain high, they would need to find a LOT more gold.

That said, looking down at the first diagram in that announcement, they have been finding gold from close to surface all the way down to this depth (500m down hole and 380m vertical depth), so this could well end up being an open pit gold mine that then goes underground at around 250m or something like that. Tropicana (owned by AngloGold Ashanti and Regis Resources - RRL) is a successful example of that - they went underground at 280m and it has extended the mine life there by a lot. There's plenty of water to flow under the bridge between now and then for Paris, but it's one possible outcome if there's enough gold there to build a mine.

I'll let you know if I come across anything else.