Each one in plain English, with the numbers worked through for a shareholder.
19 Feb 2026drilling result▲ GoodMajor
A third porphyry system at JOY, TWINS, 17 kilometres southeast of AuRORA under an 8.5 square kilometre geophysical anomaly. The story is four holes over five years getting progressively better with depth: JP21004 in 2021 gave 42 metres at 0.19 g/t gold and 0.11% copper, JP22020 210 metres at 0.14 g/t gold, JP24051 124 metres at 0.35 g/t gold and 0.13% copper, and JP25106, drilled underneath both, returned 300 metres at 0.51 g/t gold and 0.23% copper from 819 metres including 45 metres at 1.08 g/t gold and 0.47% copper. Amarc compares these to early Kemess East holes. Grades are a fraction of AuRORA's, the mineralisation starts 800 metres down, and the company says more drilling is required to build on it.
The last 12 of the 23 AuRORA expansion holes complete the 2025 picture: mineralisation now covers 1.4 kilometres by 0.8 kilometres and is still open north, east, south and southwest. After a full year of step-out drilling the deposit has roughly tripled its footprint from the 500 by 600 metre area outlined in 2024, with host rocks, alteration and grades consistent throughout.
Further step-outs extended AuRORA about 100 metres further north and 200 metres east: JP25109 returned 200.95 metres of 1.38 g/t gold and 0.27% copper including 111 metres of 2.24 g/t gold, and JP25107 gave 201 metres of 1.40 g/t gold and 0.28% copper. These are back at discovery-hole grade after the weaker northern edge. JP25093 on the same section returned only 120 metres of 0.28 g/t gold, and four step-out holes on one section were still pending. AuRORA drilling in 2024-25 now totals 45 holes and 17,586 metres.
Six holes on sections 8000N and 8100N pushed AuRORA more than 200 metres further north: 231 metres of 0.83 g/t gold and 0.22% copper including 141 metres of 1.11 g/t gold, 154 metres of 0.79 g/t gold including 60 metres of 1.58, and 200.4 metres of 0.70 g/t gold. Not every hole worked - JP25095 returned only 67 metres of 0.18 g/t gold and 0.13% copper. Grades on this northern edge run below the 2024 discovery core, which is what step-out drilling into the margins of a deposit usually looks like.
The 2025 JOY programme finished: 15,381 metres in 35 holes with up to four rigs, of which 24 holes and 9,687 metres went into AuRORA - 23 step-outs and only one infill hole, so the season was about finding the edges rather than firming up the middle. Amarc has now drilled 127 holes and 54,497 metres at JOY since 2017, and the district has been enlarged to 630 square kilometres.
A single partial result released on its own because of where it sits: JP25098, 260 metres southeast of the nearest 2024 discovery holes, returned 159 metres of 0.33% copper, 0.43 g/t gold and 5.2 g/t silver. The grade is well below the AuRORA core, but the hole lies outside the strong magnetic high that hosts the high-grade material, which means magnetic highs are not the only place worth drilling at JOY. Nineteen step-out holes and one infill hole, over 7,000 metres, had been drilled at AuRORA by then.
Freeport completed the Stage 1 requirement of C$35 million ahead of schedule and has earned an initial 60% of JOY. The C$10 million 2025 programme depends on Freeport electing to proceed to Stage 2 - a further C$75 million - which Amarc expects in the third quarter. Amarc's share of JOY is now a minority, and the drilling only continues if the partner keeps electing to fund it.
Results from IKE, the district Amarc still owns outright and funds itself. Nine 2024 holes in the Greater Empress area, 6 kilometres north of the IKE porphyry, returned 181 metres of 0.46% copper-equivalent from 30 metres including 60 metres of 0.90%, and 68 metres of 0.56% including 29 metres of 0.73%. Re-assaying historical core gave 158 metres of 0.69% including 47 metres of 1.44%, and 77 metres of 0.73% including 44 metres of 1.14%. Higher grade and more gold-rich than the bulk-tonnage IKE deposit itself, but on a property with no partner paying for it.
The remaining 2024 assays include the best hole yet at AuRORA, 132.00 metres of 1.71% copper-equivalent (1.87 g/t gold, 0.63% copper, 5.2 g/t silver) including 90.00 metres of 2.26% (2.53 g/t gold), plus 204.00 metres of 0.72% including 50.85 metres of 1.41%. Twenty holes now define AuRORA, and a second new porphyry system was discovered at the Twins target on the PINE trend. Amarc states plainly that four planned sections could not be completed because the camp housing its crew closed for the season - the programme ended on logistics rather than on results.
More AuRORA holes in the same vein: JP24060 gave 130 metres of 1.98% copper-equivalent (2.40 g/t gold) from 74 metres including 81 metres at 2.89%, and JP24075 266 metres of 1.02% from 34 metres. Two of the five reported holes were weaker - JP24068 at 192 metres of 0.56% and JP24063 at 132 metres of 0.88% - so the deposit is not uniformly high grade, but continuity from near surface holds across the step-outs.
The discovery that changes Amarc: AuRORA, in the Northwest Gossan area of JOY that had never been drilled. JP24057, the first hole ever put into it, returned 82 metres of 1.08% copper-equivalent (1.24 g/t gold, 0.38% copper, 2.47 g/t silver) from 18 metres. Systematic step-outs then gave JP24074 162 metres of 1.90% copper-equivalent (2.19 g/t gold) from 69 metres including 81 metres at 3.04%, JP24071 212 metres of 1.18% from 21 metres, and JP24059 271 metres of 0.81% from 24 metres. These are gold-rich porphyry grades several times anything Amarc has reported at PINE, DUKE or IKE, and they start near surface. Freeport funds it and Amarc operates.
Over 29,000 metres drilled across all three districts in 2024 with up to five rigs: 16,883 metres in 40 holes at seven JOY targets including PINE, Canyon, Twins and the Northwest Gossan, funded by Freeport, plus the Boliden-funded DUKE work and a programme at IKE. Assays were still being received; every result from this season, including the AuRORA discovery, was reported later.
Introduces JO, a new target in the DUKE district defined by coincident geophysical anomalies and an outcrop grab sample of 0.18% copper, 0.52 g/t gold, 16 g/t silver. It is a target, not a discovery - nothing has been drilled. Boliden funded C$10 million in 2023 and has budgeted another C$10 million for 2024.
Boliden will fund a C$10 million DUKE programme in 2024 with drilling from February. The 2022-23 drilling, 11,086 metres, expanded the deposit to 650 by 800 metres and at least 600 metres deep and produced encouraging widely spaced intercepts in the surrounding anomaly. No assay numbers are given here beyond the two holes already reported.
The 2023 JOY season is surveys and access-road rehabilitation, not drilling - refining targets ahead of an intended 2024 drill programme, fully funded by Freeport. A year with no drill results from the district that had produced the PINE expansion and the Canyon discovery.
Phase 1 at DUKE finished: 24 holes and 11,070 metres with three rigs, two on the deposit and one testing the 4.7 square kilometre geophysical anomaly around it. Boliden is funding the full C$10 million 2023 budget. Only the first two holes have been reported; the other 22 are pending, and Phase 2 in the summer will be surface surveys over ten targets rather than drilling.
The 2022 JOY programme - 37 holes, 15,427 metres - stretched the PINE deposit to more than 1,700 metres of strike with intercepts of 204 metres at 0.42% copper-equivalent and 105 metres at 0.40%, and made a genuinely new discovery at the Canyon target with 96 metres of 0.51% copper-equivalent inside 296 metres of 0.39%. Freeport has now put about C$20 million into JOY across two years. PINE's grades are gold-weighted (0.18% copper with 0.41 g/t gold); Canyon's are copper-weighted.
The second Boliden-funded hole, DK22010, returned 309 metres of 0.42% copper-equivalent from 8.6 metres including 57 metres of 0.68%, within a broader 557 metres of 0.36%. Consistent with DK22009 rather than better than it. Amarc and Boliden agreed to add a third rig, two delineating the deposit and one stepping out into the surrounding 4.7 square kilometre geophysical anomaly.
The first hole of the Boliden-funded programme, DK22009, cut 542 metres of 0.33% copper-equivalent from 9.4 metres depth - mineralised from bedrock surface to the bottom of the hole - including 183 metres of 0.43% and 126 metres of 0.52%. It shows the DUKE deposit continues far deeper than the shallow historical drilling suggested. Bulk-tonnage grade, and one hole.
Freeport spent about C$14 million on JOY in 2022, its year-two contribution and roughly two and a half times year one, funding 15,427 metres of helicopter-supported drilling and a third rig from September. Amarc remains operator. Results to come.
The first assays from JOY under Freeport - nine holes, 4,300 metres - expanded the PINE deposit with 101.9 metres of 0.56% copper-equivalent, the best grade over the longest interval PINE has produced, and showed mineralisation continuing to depth. Scout holes on other targets across the district confirmed further porphyry systems, including the first hole ever drilled into the TWINS target, which returned only 42 metres of 0.19 g/t gold and 0.11% copper - enough to prove the system exists, not enough to be a deposit.
Freeport raised its first-year JOY contribution 37.5%, from C$4 million to C$5.5 million, with the extra money going into the drill programme. Partner funding increasing mid-season is a real signal, unlike a company's own optimism about its ground.
Filed an NI 43-101 technical report on the IKE project. As with the DUKE and JOY reports filed weeks earlier, it is an exploration report rather than a resource estimate.
Filed an NI 43-101 technical report on JOY covering the PINE deposit, the MEX target and a series of drill-ready targets. No mineral resource is estimated; the report sets out proposed exploration. The pitch rests on JOY covering the northern extension of the Kemess district, where the same technical team, at Hunter Dickinson, found and sold the deposits that became the Kemess South mine.
Filed an NI 43-101 technical report on DUKE. This is an exploration and targeting report, not a resource estimate - the property has no mineral resource. It restates that most of the 30 historical shallow holes ended in mineralisation at only 124 metres vertical depth, which is the argument for drilling deeper.
Five widely spaced holes at IKE brought the drilled system to 1,200 by 1,000 metres and 875 metres vertically across 26 holes and 15,455 metres. Hole 22 returned 252 metres of 0.33% copper-equivalent including 138 metres of 0.40%, and hole 25 gave 252 metres of 0.43%. Hole 23 returned no significant results and hole 24 only 300 metres of 0.17%, so two of the five added nothing. Hudbay funded the C$1.6 million programme.
Not a results release: drilling started at the IKE copper-molybdenum-silver project near Goldbridge, up to five holes of 500 to 600 metres funded by C$1.6 million from Hudbay, which is earning up to 60% under the July 2017 IKE project agreement with Amarc as operator. The assay table is a restatement of the 21 holes already drilled, running 0.36% to 0.54% copper-equivalent over 86 to 591 metres.
Six new holes (3,060 metres) at DUKE, plus the two 2017 discovery holes, outlined porphyry copper mineralisation over an area 400 metres north-south by 600 metres east-west beneath only 4 to 18 metres of glacial till, open in all directions and continuing to the 360-metre depth limit of the drilling. Best intercepts are DK18005 at 330 metres of 0.34% copper-equivalent from 14 metres and DK17002 at 113 metres of 0.37%. Seven of the eight holes hit; DK18004, drilled a kilometre north to test the 4 by 1 kilometre geophysical anomaly, returned only moderate to low grade over 93 metres at 0.30%. Bulk-tonnage grades, not high grade.
