The playbook — copper · September 17, 2026
ATEX stretches its B2B copper strike by half, finds more east and north
The Phase VI wrap traces the high-grade breccia to about 600 metres and drops an 887-metre intercept — while the stock sat out a copper rally.
ATEX Resources has closed the book on its Phase VI drilling at the Valeriano copper-gold project in Chile’s Atacama belt, and the final numbers do two things at once. They stretch the high-grade “B2B” breccia — a body of broken, metal-rich rock — about 200 metres further south, lifting the traced strike to roughly 600 metres, up 50%. And they find fresh mineralization east and north of the known core. When we last covered ATEX, the breccia was already near 600 metres and open; this release fills in the shape.
Here is the logic. In porphyry systems, grade times thickness is what feeds a mine. Some of these hits are genuinely large. Hole ATXD26B cut 887 metres at 1.06% copper-equivalent — a single grade that blends copper, gold and molybdenum — the widest interval on record here, running down into the underlying porphyry. Hole ATXD25C returned 86 metres at 3.84% and 40 metres at 4.83% copper-equivalent, rich by any measure. That southward extension traces the zone about 200 metres beyond known mineralization, lifting the strike to about 600 metres; ATXD32 pushed the high-grade core about 100 metres north. Multiple holes returning this kind of continuity is the point — it is scale plus repetition, not one hero hole. Agnico Eagle sits on the register from a US$40M placement, and the company reported over C$100M in cash as of December 2025. Yet the stock shed nearly 16% over three months while copper rose 2.3% and the copper-miner index held flat — ATEX sat out the move.
Now the honesty. Reported B2B widths are core lengths, not true widths; only one northern zone carries a stated true width of about 150 metres, so headline metres may overstate the mineralized thickness. Many intercepts sit deep — ATXD26B runs from 763 to 1,650 metres downhole, others past 2,000 — which matters for any eventual mining. The copper-equivalent grades lean on rich price assumptions (US$2,750/oz gold, US$22/lb molybdenum); copper-only grades are materially lower. The east and north extensions are lower grade and earlier-stage. The provided results do not state QA/QC sample rates or name a qualified person. Both the CEO and CFO seats are filled on an interim basis. The company says Phase VII drilling is expected to start early in Q4 2026, with scope and first results to follow. Management targets an updated resource estimate in the second half of 2027.