The Latitude Consolidated Ltd (ASX: LCD) share price is having a stellar day today. Latitude Consolidated shares are up a chunky 32.20% at the time of writing to 7.8 cents a share. That comes after Latitude closed at 5.9 cents per share last Friday and opened at 7.2 cents per share this morning. Latitude shares were actually in a trading halt yesterday, which the company requested yesterday morning before market open.
Well, shares have resumed trading today, and with gusto.
So what's going on with the Latitude Consolidated share price?
There's gold in them hills
Well, it seems as though today's decisive share price movement is the result of an update Latitude gave the markets this morning just before open. In this update, the gold miner informed investors that it now expects that its Murchison Gold Project houses 13.1 million tonnes of gold ore. The concentration is at 2.6 grams per tonne. Murchison is located in the Murchison goldfields in Western Australia. That gives it a reserve estimate of 1,115,000 ounces of gold.
This windfall comes from the Turnberry mineral resource in Murchison, a shallow gold deposit that has yet to be mined. The company's estimates now evaluate Turnberry as housing 610,000 ounces of gold.
So how did Latitude get here? Here's how the company said it happened:
[The] previous modelling of the resource was performed in a manner so as to produce a low tonnage, high grade estimate... Although this approach was strategically valid and also reflective of the gold price environment at the time, it resulted in a large number of mineralised intersections present in drilling being left out of the historical Mineral Resource estimates.
Here's some of what Latitude Consolidated CEO Tim Davisson had to say on the announcement today:
We continue to build on our large, existing high-grade gold resource and this 125% upgrade at Turnberry is a fantastic outcome for Latitude. In short order, we have been able to clearly demonstrate the true scale and growth potential of our high-grade gold projects in the prolific Western Australian gold producing region of the Murchison.
About the Latitude Consolidate share price
Latitude is a small-tier gold miner and exploration company. Today's share price move means that Latitude Consolidated shares are now up 150% year to date. They're also up a healthy 650% over the past 12 months. At the current share price, Latitude Consolidated has a market capitalisation of $57.27 million.
