Searching for new investment opportunities? Vancouver broadcasting legend, Jody Vance, speaks with public company CEOs in the voice of the common person, to break down complex business models into simple terms, and find out how the icons of business handle their own investments. Today, Jody sits with Ranjeet Sundher, CEO and director of Canadian junior explorer, Brigadier Gold, about his investment strategies, his management team and the company’s flagship property in Mexico. Tune in!
Transcript:
Jody Vance
Now. Welcome to the Experience, Equity Guru’s, Jody Vance Experience, where I’m sort of the layman who gets to ask the questions of the people who are at the helm. And today we are going to dive a little bit deeper into what many people here in British Columbia get– well, frankly, fairly deep into. And that is the junior exploration gold companies, Brigadier Gold in particular. And we have the president and CEO, Ranjeet Sundher with us here on Zoom, as we do during covid-19. One day will be in studio together, Ranj, but thanks for doing this.
Ranjeet Sundher
Pleasure to be here, Jody, hope I can help out with some questions for your audience.
Jody Vance
I know that you can, and I’m looking forward to diving into what Brigadier Gold is all about but first, can I ask you how you approach investment? Like what? Do you remember your first investment?
Ranjeet Sundher
Well, I started work on the stock exchange on the floor 30 years ago. There was three hundred guys down there. So you saw all sorts of personalities. Some people were extremely successful in how they approached everything, some not so much. So I kind of follow the leaders or follow people who have done it before, and I know how hard it is to get things done. So I’m kind of always looking for not myself in people, but people have a very strong work ethic, who don’t just do– in our business, you can’t do a nine to five and forget about it. It really is twenty four seven. But if you do things correctly, you do have some nice time off as well. So I’m looking for a work ethic and people who have been there and done that.
Jody Vance
So when you deep dive into looking at a company, if someone’s looking at Brigadier Gold right now and sort of dissecting whether or not it’s worthy of their investment, what would you tell them to look for and what they might see in Brigadier Gold?
Ranjeet Sundher
Oh, most definitely the people. Look at myself. Thirty years in the stock market mining business. Last 20-plus years in Asia. I’ve put a couple of mines into production. I have built and sold public companies and made shareholders money. That’s me. But what I look for even more in a company like a mining exploration company is the technical side. We have Michelle Robinson in Mexico, 20-plus years there. Our asset, which we have, which we’re pinning a lot of hopes to, which is developing quite well. She’s had under her care for a decade. She’s lived and breathed this asset. She’s a Canadian QP, which is a qualified person, A, UBC grad, and as extremely highly regarded in the sector in South America. So look deeply into Michelle. Look what she’s done. Look where she is. And you’ll see two people in her and myself who are a great team.
Jody Vance
Miss Michelle Robinson, if you’re frantically writing down the name, that was absolutely one of the questions I was going to bring to you as your senior geologist, she is sitting on your property, as you referenced in Mexico, that is sort of bookended, I guess, by two other– gee, what would I call a geological finds, what would I call the properties of the companies that are on either side of you that have hit fairly big?
Ranjeet Sundher
Success stories?
Jody Vance
There you go.
Ranjeet Sundher
Success stories for shareholders who own their stock.
Jody Vance
Right.
Ranjeet Sundher
Both those companies were 20 to 30 cents, we’ll say earlier this year. And both those companies had some enormous success. And one went to three dollars and one went to well over a dollar. And now they’re over one hundred to one hundred fifty million dollars in market cap.
Jody Vance
Wow.
Ranjeet Sundher
You have our company in the middle at about a 15 million dollar market cap. And that’s what investors look for, an entry point at a place where they can make money. And our project is in the middle. It’s in Mexico. It’s a two hour drive from Mazatlan, to give people an idea where it is. You fly to Mazatlan, you drive two hours and you’re on site. So we’re in the right place, at the right time. And our approach is quite similar to theirs. They’re exploring historical workings. Their projects have had no large scale production, but small scale production and a lot of underground work.
Jody Vance
Right.
Ranjeet Sundher
Michelle’s project is the same. What’s interesting is, yes, Michelle is our head geologists. Yes, Michelle is running our project, but she was the owner of this asset as well. We did the owner with Michelle and then said, listen, you need to stay around and run this because no matter where you are, it’s social relationships, local permitting, understanding that rock over or as simple as don’t go down that road, there’s a big mud hole and the drill will get stuck.
Jody Vance
Right.
Ranjeet Sundher
So we’re in the right place with the right person.
Jody Vance
Invested emotionally, personally, as well as financially in results and seeing what you can find. Where would you see gold now positioned as we see such a huge change south of the border in the United States with regard to the presidency as well as a global pandemic?
Ranjeet Sundher
I think timing is everything. At certain times in the gold cycle, you’re going to invest in a gold stock. They’re going to have some success. But the price of your stock is not going to go higher because gold is not trending. The overall markets aren’t saying gold is going higher. But if you pick it at the right time, which I believe is right now, gold shareholders, gold speculators and junior companies are getting rewarded. So if you’ve ever looked at junior gold stocks or junior silver stocks investing, say, four or five years ago, if your investment company had some success, would have been OK. Now, if they’re hitting, it’s really good for the shareholders.
Jody Vance
Which is a good point for somebody who might be a novice in this. And I think that maybe spreading that money around a little bit into some affordable stocks that have the history or the people that you’re talking about, like with your team at the investment that you’ve made personally and how intrinsically you’ve explained like, it’s two hours outside of Mazatlán and you don’t go down that hill because the mud’s there. Those are things that make people feel the connection, because I think investing for some who are new at this, might look at people in positions of power in any company and say, you just want to take my money. Where as people like yourself are really– I’m looking at the details in front of me. And you’re on an expedition. You are literally mining for gold. It’s it could be really fun to go on a journey, but it’s also a risk associated with it. And results are a big piece of that. So tell us about your expectations, projections and any sort of findings that you’ve had to this point.
Ranjeet Sundher
Sure. I’ll backtrack a little bit as far as the– we’ll call them the novice early investor. Look for a market cap, look for a valuation when you’re beginning your every thousand dollars is extremely important to you. So if you see a stock as went from twenty five cents to one dollar, two dollars, three dollars, you might thinking, wow, that’s that’s incredible. It’s a two dollars stock. And they’re saying it’s going to ten dollars. It certainly can. But when you’re getting going, try to pick stocks at the very beginning and that being nobody has stock cheaper than you or the majority of the company has never traded much, much lower. So pick something where your entry point truly is the beginning and not halfway through because then you’ve missed out on a lot. So pick those 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 cent stocks and hope they go to three to five dollars because it’s much easier for that to happen than a two dollar stock to go to five dollars – that’s a hard move.
Jody Vance
Right, that’s great advice. So when it comes to what your expectations are for Brigadier Gold in the near term, what would you say?
Ranjeet Sundher
Oh, we’re going to repeat the success of our neighbors. I believe our project. At the current stage is at the same stage they were at, say, eight months ago, but I actually like our asset much better, so we’re looking to repeat that and get 10, 15 times return for our shareholders. Have them experience that beginning boom of valuation. Then, of course, we move on and we deal with larger companies, larger investors. But it’s a retail investor story. And we’re looking to repeat what our neighbors to the south and to the north have done in the last, well, have done during 2020.
Jody Vance
We’re with Ranj Sundher, who’s the president and CEO of Brigadier Gold. And I want to know, what does the typical day look like for you?
Ranjeet Sundher
Wow, they’re long. I can’t wait for Friday actually out, everything’s little Friday for me right now. Since we’re publicly traded, I’m currently in Vancouver, so the markets are open up at six-thirty. I’m very engaged with our shareholder base because I believe we’re telling a story. We have moved from listing, acquisition, financing and drilling in about six months.
Jody Vance
Wow.
Ranjeet Sundher
I’ve never seen a junior move that quick. Just for your information, for your investors’ information.
Jody Vance
Yeah
Ranjeet Sundher
It’s lightning speed. So I get up every morning, I make a cup of coffee and I field all the emails from my shareholders in Europe because we also trade in Germany. So first couple hours are dealing with Europe and then our market opens up. And because our drills are turning, there’s a lot of analysts and savvy investors asking very hard geological, technical questions. So I deal with those because I have to treat the retail investor the same as that investor, because everybody has different kind of questions. Than Michelle on site. I hope the communications are working and it’s not too many clouds in the air. Ask her how is the drilling going? Anything I can do to support you then? Generally, there’s a little bit of https://e4njohordzs.exactdn.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/tnw8sVO3j-2.png paying some bills, but it’s a long day. The market closes at one o’clock Vancouver time and generally my day will go to three or four o’clock and then it begins in the evening again. Some of our shareholders don’t watch their stock all day long. They have an office job, they go home, they have their dinner and maybe have a drink. And they look at their portfolio and they’ll ask me questions and I’ll likely be extremely responsive. You know, it’s invested money. Five hundred, one thousand or one million dollars. It’s invested money. I want them to feel engaged and understand as to where we are, on a week by week, day by day, month by month basis.
Jody Vance
I like that you are as engaged with those who are investing at a lower level and willing to ask the questions like I am today. As I told you right off the top, I am no expert on this, and yet I feel more and more women are finding their way. I mean, obviously we’re talking about geologists and people within companies. That’s standard. But there are a lot of women who have felt that there was really not a lot of place for them in the investment world. And we’re kind of broadening out at Equity Guru with more advice to to pull young, particularly women, into the investment circle. Is there is there a tip that was sort of investment 101 like you said, when you were on the floor at the stock exchange with all of the guys? Because you literally said, with a bunch of guys because it was.
Ranjeet Sundher
Three hundred of those guys.
Jody Vance
Totally. Totally. And as a former woman in sports, I often get asked, what was it like because you were the only or one of the only? And so women are are definitely ready, more than ready to get into it. But is there sort of a 101, basic piece of advice that maybe isn’t just regularly out there? With your experience being so long, so many decades long in this industry, what’s the– it like the, you know, only invest what you can lose or once you hit big, take out your initial investment and play with the rest of it, like, is there something in there that you can– a nugget of gold you can leave us?
Ranjeet Sundher
I like that second point because I use that, take out your original investment. You buy something at fifty cents, it to a dollar, sell half, get your money back and there’s the money you can start to grow with. I use that myself. I’m always looking to get a free ride by getting in early. So number one is get in early. If you’re hearing about company has been beating a project for years and years and years, it doesn’t mean it’s not going to be a success. But get to something fresh, something early, something where the company is extremely responsive. And if you look back, you see that are moving fast. You see they have a focus and you see that they’re driven. There’s a lot of public companies out there. There’s a lot of junior companies out there, like literally hundreds of them. So how how do you as an investor, where do I put my thousand dollars? Well, pick the team. Look at how they made shareholders money before. Do they have a reputation? Can I find them online? You can generally find out if someone has been operating uncompliantly(sic) we’ll say, by a few Google searches. So basic due diligence on the person, the company, their speed. And if the company is responsive in asking your simple questions, great. If they don’t reply to you. It’s not– so for me as an investor, I don’t like that, when I email company, when I come across something which I think looks good, I want to ask a couple very simple questions generally – nothing technical. If they don’t reply to me, it’s sort of a red flag.
Jody Vance
So if somebody were to send you a note today and say what were the results today like, what would you respond?
Ranjeet Sundher
Specifically about today? I would say the results today were fantastic, how unfortunate we put them out on a day when gold was down thirty five dollars, you can’t pick that. We have some extremely smart shareholders and institutional investors. And then the email I was getting and the messages I was getting were today to be very keep your chin up, Ranj, those results were fantastic. It was just a day in the markets. You can’t predict it. So someone says to me today, how are those results like you asked? They were fantastic results. They were– Michelle and her team are extremely pleased on site. We view it as a success. Was the first of probably twenty five press releases like that. But today was a rough day for the gold junior investor.
Jody Vance
But the way you frame that takes the edge off. So if I as an investor asked that question, you said extremely positive results today on a really shitty day for gold. That would make sense to me as an investor, I would not feel as nervous as I was, if only seeing the result and the market number. Right?
Ranjeet Sundher
So you look at the volume also.
Jody Vance
Yeah, fair.
Ranjeet Sundher
I believe, with Canada and the US today, we had our highest trading volume day ever. So for as many people, as said, oh we’ve got to sell. You know the people who sell the stocks, they were scared of the gold volatility. But for just as many people who sold, people who said, those results are good. We want to own this company. And what a great day for us to enter when gold was down and we’re not paying X, we’re paying this price.
Jody Vance
So it’s the buy-low sell-high, right there. I’m getting more 101! Ranj, thank you so much for being part of the Jody Vance Experience and helping us sort of inch our way out into the market and help people and educate people this way. I hope we get an opportunity to chat again and certainly maybe one day in studio when we’re on the other side of of covid-19. Thank you.
Ranjeet Sundher
That would be my pleasure. Thank you very much.
Full disclosure: Brigadier Gold is an Equity.Guru marketing client.