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For over two decades, the Pt. Leamington deposit in central Newfoundland sat untouched. No drill turned between 2004 and early 2026, and the market treated it as a known quantity: a large but static block of metal in the ground.

That assumption broke in 2026. Visionary Copper & Gold Mines Inc. put a rig back on the property for the first time in more than 20 years and hit something the old resource model never accounted for, a copper-bearing zone named Kraken sitting directly beneath the known deposit.

The timing matters. Institutional forecasters including S&P Global and the International Energy Agency (IEA) project structural copper supply deficits, and major producers are increasingly buying safe-jurisdiction Canadian assets rather than finding their own. Against that backdrop, a large volcanogenic massive sulphide (VMS) deposit in a tier-one mining province suddenly reads differently.

Here is the framework for weighing the technical upside of the upcoming 20,000-metre drill programme against the very real financial risks of an early-stage explorer, so you can judge whether the Kraken discovery genuinely changes the investment case or simply dresses up an old one.

The baseline resource and the Kraken catalyst

Start with what is already proven, because that sets your floor. The 2021 NI 43-101 Mineral Resource Estimate, prepared by P&E Mining Consultants, quantifies the massive sulphide lens alone. A NI 43-101 resource is a concentration of minerals with reasonable prospects for eventual economic extraction, classified by confidence as Inferred, Indicated, or Measured.

NI 43-101 resource classification sets out the confidence thresholds that separate Inferred, Indicated, and Measured categories, with category upgrades carrying direct implications for how the market prices a deposit’s economic potential.

At a combined 20.4 Mt, Pt. Leamington is large for its type. Most VMS deposits fall between 3 Mt and 5 Mt, so this deposit is already several times the typical size before any new drilling is counted.

Within the pit-constrained portion of roughly 13.7 Mt, the deposit holds an estimated 500,000 ounces of gold, 170 Mlb of copper, 680 Mlb of zinc, and 8 million ounces of silver. That polymetallic mix is central to how you should read the stock, and it comes back later.

Set that physical metal against a market capitalisation of about C$23.7 million as of late September 2026, and the leverage becomes obvious. The company trades at a small fraction of the in-ground metal value, which is exactly why exploration success can move the stock so hard in either direction.

Unpacking the Phase 1 drill results

The 2026 Phase 1 campaign, a 10-hole, 3,556-metre programme, was the first systematic drilling in over 20 years. The results pushed the known massive sulphide system to more than 1 kilometre of strike length and, more importantly, revealed a copper stringer zone named Kraken sitting in the deposit footwall, entirely absent from the 2021 resource model.

The discovery hole, PL-112, returned 75.8 metres grading 0.45% copper, including a higher-grade 12.0 metres at 1.09% copper. PL-115 followed with 52.7 metres at 0.30% copper, and PL-118 hit 22.5 metres at 0.53% copper.

Here is the detail that reframes the valuation: step-out holes more than 300 metres from the initial discovery continued to intersect wide mineralised intervals. Kraken sits entirely outside the 2021 resource, so every one of these metres is potential new tonnage that the market was not pricing three months ago. The 2021 figure, in other words, is now only half the story.

Copper discovery catalysts follow a recognisable pattern across jurisdictions: a surface geochemical or geophysical anomaly, a first-pass drill programme that confirms mineralisation, and then a rapid reassessment of in-ground value as the market prices in the possibility of a larger system below the initial intersection.

Why footwall stringer zones transform project economics

The surface signal that started everything at Pt. Leamington was simple: massive sulphide boulders found at surface in the 1970s after an airborne survey. Understanding what sits beneath that signal is what lets you value the Kraken discovery properly.

VMS deposits form on ancient seafloors, where hot, metal-rich fluids rise through the volcanic pile and precipitate metals as they cool. That process builds two distinct things. Near the seafloor, the fluids dump their load quickly and form high-grade massive sulphide lenses. Below them, the same fluids leave behind a network of veins in the feeder pathway, the footwall stringer zone.

Kraken is that feeder system. Its grades are moderate compared with the overlying lens, and that is normal for stringer zones. What they lack in grade they make up in volume.

The commercial logic follows directly. Massive sulphide lenses deliver the higher grades and simpler shapes that drive the early economics of a project. Footwall stringers deliver the bulk tonnage that extends mine life and, crucially, is often what attracts a major producer to acquire the whole asset.

You do not have to take the model on faith. Established Canadian VMS camps such as Kidd Creek, Noranda, and Flin Flon all show the same architecture, documented by the Geological Survey of Canada.

The Geological Survey of Canada VMS deposit documentation covers the architecture of Canadian camps including Kidd Creek and Bathurst, detailing how footwall stringer zones relate to the overlying massive sulphide lens and their combined contribution to deposit scale.

The most useful comparison sits just 80 kilometres away. FireFly Metals’ Ming deposit expanded from a 3-4 Mt massive sulphide lens into a substantially larger deposit, with much of that growth driven by a footwall copper stringer zone directly analogous to Kraken.

That analogue carries weight because of who is running the exploration. Vice President of Exploration Jason Flight was present at Ming during its expansion phase, and the management team also includes Peter Jones, former founding chief executive of Hudbay Minerals. The people pursuing the bulk-tonnage thesis at Pt. Leamington have executed a version of it before, though prior success never guarantees a repeat.

For you, the takeaway is a shift in how you read future drill results. Moderate Kraken grades are not a disappointment; they are the expected profile of the exact geological feature that could make this deposit big enough to change hands.

The 20,000-metre drill strategy and regional consolidation

The Phase 2 programme, approved by regulators on 2 September 2026 and outlined on 10 September 2026, is where the thesis gets tested. Around 90% of the budget is directed at Pt. Leamington, and the drill design is unusually efficient.

Because Kraken sits directly beneath the existing resource, each hole is planned to pass through the massive sulphide lens before continuing into the stringer zone. One borehole advances two objectives at once. The programme is engineered to prove three things:

Alongside the drill rig sits a low-cost lever most investors overlook. Visionary intends to resample up to 2,000 metres of historical core. Examination of hyperspectral imagery and core photographs across 48 historical holes turned up eight boreholes containing broad, visually mineralised stringer sections that prior programmes left incompletely sampled.

Hole PL-010 is the standout example. The borehole trajectories place it within about 20 metres of recent hole PL-118, yet PL-010 carries an altered section spanning roughly 80 metres of core that no assay programme has ever tested. No grades can be claimed until laboratory results return, but resampling offers a cheap path to additional resource data without turning a single new metre of rock.

For your portfolio, the dual-purpose design means the coming press releases carry compound significance. A single strong hole could upgrade existing resources and prove new tonnage simultaneously, and knowing that lets you read each result for what management is actually trying to demonstrate.

Untested conductors and regional scale

On 22 September 2026, Visionary secured roughly 3,575 hectares across six mineral licences, lifting its total land package to about 33,000 hectares. Part of that ground was acquired from a private vendor for C$10,000 in cash, C$40,000 in shares, and a 1% net smelter return royalty repurchasable for C$1 million.

The prize on the new ground is a set of five untested electromagnetic (EM) conductors identified by a 2007 helicopter survey. EM surveys detect buried conductive rock, and sulphide deposits are conductive, which is why these anomalies are worth drilling.

Two of the five conductors have historical reports of massive sulphide boulders at surface nearby. That is the exact signature that led Noranda to Pt. Leamington in the 1970s, which is why these targets carry more than routine interest.

Weighing the macro tailwinds against early-stage capital risks

Now the cold part. The geology can be compelling and the stock can still hurt you, because at this stage your capital is exposed less to rock and more to financing.

The macro backdrop is genuinely supportive. Structural copper deficits projected by the IEA and S&P Global, combined with a scarcity of large new discoveries, are pushing majors toward acquisition. Eldorado Gold’s purchase of Foran Mining and its McIlvenna Bay VMS project is the kind of deal that keeps advanced Canadian VMS assets in demand.

The copper supply crunch driving institutional forecasts from the IEA and S&P Global is not a short-cycle disruption; it reflects a decade of underinvestment in new mine development that is now colliding with electrification demand, which is precisely why large, near-development VMS deposits in safe jurisdictions are drawing acquisition interest from majors.

The polymetallic mix adds a second cushion. With meaningful gold, zinc, and silver alongside copper, weakness in one commodity can be partly offset by by-product credits, giving the project exposure to both precious and base metal cycles rather than betting everything on copper.

Then there is the balance sheet. Visionary raised approximately C$3.04 million in December 2025, but as of late September 2026 dedicated funding for the full 20,000-metre Phase 2 campaign had not been finalised. That gap is the single most important near-term variable.

VMS project financing at scale typically involves a sequenced combination of equity raises, strategic investor placements, and royalty agreements, and the Meridian Mining case illustrates how a developer can move from early exploration through to a committed capital structure across multiple rounds without catastrophic dilution.

The key risks to weigh:

The read for you is straightforward. The geological setup is well supported, but your immediate exposure is to the cyclical risk of drill financing and the possibility of dilution before the rock ever gets a chance to prove itself.

This article is for informational purposes only and should not be considered financial advice. Investors should conduct their own research and consult with financial professionals before making investment decisions. Past performance does not guarantee future results, and financial projections are subject to market conditions and various risk factors.

Sizing up the next six months of drill flow

The clock is what matters now. Management has pointed to a six-to-eight-month horizon for meaningful resource growth once Phase 2 begins, which means the results that reprice this stock are a couple of quarters out rather than years away.

Before any of that geological potential can be realised, the funding gap has to close. Resolving Phase 2 financing is the immediate catalyst, and until it does, the drill plan remains a plan rather than an outcome.

Strip it back and the position is clear. Pt. Leamington is a large, advanced VMS deposit in a tier-one jurisdiction, carried by a management team that has grown a comparable deposit before, arriving in the middle of a structural copper bull market.

That combination is why the asset is worth watching. Whether it rewards shareholders depends on two things landing in sequence: the money to drill, then the metres to prove the Kraken thesis. Watch the financing announcement first; the geology only gets its turn once the capital is in place.

For readers wanting to understand the policy environment shaping early-stage exploration budgets in Canada and comparable jurisdictions, our full explainer on mineral exploration incentives covers flow-through share structures, tax credits, and how government programmes affect the capital available to companies like Visionary at the pre-feasibility stage.