Ballard Mining Ltd (ASX: BM1) has been delivering some encouraging exploration results recently, and the gold company's story has piqued the interest of the analysts at Moelis Australia, who have just initiated coverage of the stock.
Moelis has a bullish share price target on the company's shares, which we'll get to shortly.
First, let's look at the company's recent announcements.
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ASX gold company delivering with exploration success
Ballard in mid-June said in a statement to the ASX that it had made a new gold discovery north of its Baldock deposit.
The new Pluto discovery included intersections, including 5m at 10.2 grams per tonne of gold from 98m, and 7m at 3.7 grams per tonne from 19m.
Ballard also extended its Ayla discovery by 200m and returned more good results from its Neptune discovery.
Just a week later, the company reported more high grade results at Baldock outside of the current one million ounce resource.
Ballard Managing Director Paul Brennan said at the time:
This is a very exciting development for Ballard. These results have the potential to add a material resource uplift to the existing base load +1 Moz Baldock deposit. The Company's CY2026 exploration program is currently optimised towards near-term development rather than fully testing the potential of the system. These results continue to reinforce our belief that Mt Ida is potentially a camp scale project that has been historically under-explored. As we work through the remainder of our planned drilling for this calendar year, our focus is on identifying the next 1 Moz at Mt Ida.
Shares looking like good value
Moelis said in its report on Ballard that the Australian gold sector was maturing, and it was turning its focus to companies further down the development curve.
Moelis said regarding Ballard:
The key tenements are already mine permitted, and studies are well advanced around the potential to develop a new gold mining operation capable of operating in excess of 8 years producing an initial 80koz Au annually. While very early stage, our modelling suggests total capital of approximately A$270m to establish an operation with competitive industry cash costs (aided by high grade underground ore feed).
Moelis said, on current timelines, the company could be in a position to formally commit to funding and development by the end of FY27, enabling first production at the start of FY29 via an open-pit mine, followed by an underground operation from CY30.
Moelis added:
In our view the exploration potential of the region is significant and could aid both higher production run rates or longer mine life with further discovery.
Moelis has a price target of 90 cents on Ballard Mining shares compared to 63.5 cents at the time of writing.
