The Sunstone Metals Ltd (ASX: STM) share price is flying today and is now 36% higher at 9.4 cents.
The mineral explorer's shares are lifting as the market responds positively to an announcement on its drilling program at the Bramaderos project in southern Ecuador.
Prospecting at the site has revealed a potential new discovery in addition to other gold-copper discoveries announced recently in Ecuador.
Here are the details.
What did Sunstone Metals announce?
The company advised it has obtained "exceptional" assays from the first drill hole at its Alba target located at the Bramaderos site.
The hole targeted an anomaly identified in earlier studies, and intersected mineralisation at a "relatively shallow depth of around 65 metres from surface".
Follow-up drilling is set to commence next week after the completion of further drill holes at the company's additional prospects.
Sunstone Metals says, at this stage, it is thought the gold system extends northeast to southwest. In addition, the high gold zone is interpreted as "a 'later' gold-rich event over a broad and deeper gold-copper porphyry mineralised system".
No other significant drilling has occurred at the Alba site historically. Other samples obtained from other companies have yet to be tested, therefore additional results are interpreted as "highly encouraging" by the company.
The release builds on prior results announced back in September for the company's Brama prospect, also located at the Bramaderos site.
These assays indicated further potential for Brama to host a substantial gold-copper porphyry system at its location in southern Ecuador.
Drilling at the site is set to continue through to December 2021, and an initial mineral resource estimate will be undertaken in early 2022, per the company.
Aside from this, Sunstone updated the market on drilling at its El Palmar site, where it intersected 480 metres of gold and copper in its first drill hole of the site.
Speaking on today's announcement, Sunstone's managing director Malcolm Norris said:
This has long been an area where we were keen to advance our exploration program and these results justify our systematic approach to testing multiple targets. The intersection at Alba is clearly an exceptional result which we will follow-up immediately. The broader Alba target opens up a number of areas for drill testing.
Sunstone Metals share price history
The Sunstone Metals share price has soared more than 526% in the last 12 months of trading. It has also rallied 571% this year to date.
However, Sunstone Metals is a share that was trading below 2.5% almost the entire year until its announcement on 5 October. That sent its share price north in an almost vertical fashion.
It has climbed off a low of 2.2 cents to jump to its all-time high in today's session. At the time of writing, Sunstone Metals has a market capitalisation of $154 million.
