Daly Resources enters drilling race with bigger Huckitta fluorite targets

IPO cash funds Daly’s first drilling campaign

Daly Resources Limited (ASX:DLY) has finished its first financial year as a listed explorer with the balance sheet to pursue its next test: turning a large Northern Territory landholding into drill targets. The company held $11.046 million in cash at 30 June after raising $12 million through its initial public offering and listing on 23 June.

The capital supports more than 6,500 km² of 100%-owned tenure across the Huckitta, Broughton and Batten projects. Daly spent $204,722 on exploration by year end, against $8.1 million budgeted over two years in its prospectus, with most of the post-listing work occurring after the reporting date. Sandfire Resources remains the major shareholder with 12 million shares, or 13.19%.

The financial result itself was distinctly explorer-shaped: a $3.632 million net loss, compared with $352,743 a year earlier. Non-cash share-based payments accounted for $3.227 million of the FY26 remuneration expense, while operating cash outflow was a much smaller $451,554. The company carries no debt, but its own report says future exploration and development may require further funding.

Huckitta fluorite footprint expands beneath cover

Huckitta remains the centrepiece. Historical and pre-IPO rock-chip sampling returned grades of up to 95.1% calcium fluoride, or CaF₂, while work completed after year end identified a previously untested western vein more than 5 km from the historical focus. Rock chips from that vein returned more than 20% CaF₂ over more than 700 metres of strike, with a peak result of 91.2% CaF₂.

The company’s expanded Huckitta soil anomalies now include a roughly 1 km-wide CaF₂-in-soil anomaly and several fluorine anomalies along a 10.7 km northern traverse. Daly says the anomalies extend through cover beyond known outcrop, while later rock-chip sampling returned up to 74.2% CaF₂. These are encouraging indicators of scale, but they remain geochemical and surface results rather than evidence of a defined deposit.

A roughly 3,200 line-km airborne magnetic and radiometric survey completed in July improved the company’s interpretation of structures associated with mapped fluorite veins. Daly plans a systematic soil grid, integration of the geophysical and geochemical data, and target ranking for maiden drilling. No drilling had been undertaken on the company’s tenements at 30 June.

Base-metal targets add depth to the exploration pipeline

Daly is not relying on fluorite alone. At Box Hole, within Huckitta, a post-year-end technical review identified a large-scale zinc-lead-silver target of Mississippi Valley-type. The mineralised horizon has been traced over about 6.7 km, historical workings produced high-grade galena, and previously prepared reverse-circulation drill targets remain untested after rainfall interrupted a 2023 programme. Access permitting and new soil work stand between the target and a possible drill test.

At Broughton, the Northern Territory Government awarded $150,000 in co-funding for a planned 2,018 line-km VTEM survey, the first modern airborne electromagnetic dataset over the nominated priority corridors. Batten, near the McArthur River zinc district, remains an earlier-stage proposition centred on the undrilled Hot Spring conductor and gravity target. The company has also retained Bulman and Beetaloo as longer-term pipeline projects, including tenure applications that still require access and regulatory progress.

The resource gap remains the central test

Daly has no reported Mineral Resources or Ore Reserves. Its exploration assets were carried at $2.639 million at year end, and the company disclosed a 1.5% net smelter return royalty payable to Sandfire over the relevant Huckitta and North Batten tenements. The annual report also flags discretionary minimum tenement expenditure of $897,042 to maintain current rights, although that amount can be varied.

That leaves the company with a useful cash runway but a demanding conversion task. The next meaningful milestones are not another high-grade rock chip: they are coherent drill targets, access and approvals, maiden drilling, and results capable of demonstrating continuity at depth. Until then, Daly’s investment case rests on the possibility that its expanding surface footprint leads somewhere more substantial underground.