AbraSilver's 228-Metre Gold Hole Has Its Richest Core Below the Diablillos Pit Design

The richest rock in AbraSilver's best gold hole so far sits about fifty metres below the open pit the company has designed at Diablillos in northern Argentina. AbraSilver reported the hole on October 21, 2026, from the Oculto East target at its silver-gold project in Salta Province.

The hole, DDH-26-061, cut 228 metres of oxide rock averaging 1.79 grams of gold per tonne. Oxide rock has been weathered near the surface, so its gold can be dissolved out with a cyanide solution rather than put through the costlier treatment that unweathered sulphide rock needs. The release reports the widths as drilled, says the true widths are not yet known, and gives the assays uncut, meaning no unusually rich sample was capped before the average was taken.

John Miniotis, the company's president and chief executive, said in the release that the hole "shows that oxide gold mineralization continues below the current open pit and beyond the current Mineral Resource." That sentence is the news.

A pit designed in June and a hole that runs beneath it

AbraSilver Resource Corp., which trades on the Toronto Stock Exchange as ABRA, owns 100 per cent of Diablillos. In June 2026 it completed a definitive feasibility study, the detailed engineering and cost document a company prepares before deciding whether to build a mine. According to the company's June 22, 2026 release, the study describes an open pit feeding a tank-leach plant that treats 9,000 tonnes of rock a day over a 25-year mine life, with initial capital of US$722 million.

At the study's base-case prices of US$50 an ounce for silver and US$3,650 an ounce for gold, the after-tax net present value at a 5 per cent discount rate came to US$3.0 billion. The study is the company's projection, and the prices are the assumptions it chose.

The same study set the Proven and Probable reserves at 77.9 million tonnes grading 146 grams of silver-equivalent per tonne, holding 184 million ounces of silver and 1.8 million ounces of gold, figures the October 21, 2026 release restates. A reserve is the part of a deposit that a completed study shows can be mined at a profit. Silver-equivalent folds the gold into a single silver number at a fixed ratio of metal prices.

A reserve sits inside a resource, the wider and less certain estimate of what is in the ground. AbraSilver's resource is dated April 30, 2026 and set out in a technical report dated June 19, 2026. It counts about 232 million tonnes of measured and indicated oxides at 0.34 grams of gold and 33 grams of silver per tonne, plus a smaller inferred category. Measured and indicated means the drilling is dense enough to count the tonnes with reasonable confidence; inferred means the geology is understood well enough to estimate but not to rely on. The resource is reported inside a conceptual pit shell, and the release repeats the standard caution that "Mineral Resources are not Mineral Reserves and have not demonstrated economic viability."

The richest part of DDH-26-061 sits outside all of that. The company places the hole's high-grade core about 50 metres below the current open-pit design and says the gold zone "extends beyond the limits of the current Mineral Resource model." In plain terms, by the company's account the high-grade rock in this hole was not in the count the mine plan was built on.

The release carries four holes from Oculto East, all in oxides and all reported as drilled widths:

Source: AbraSilver release of October 21, 2026, which notes that all results are rounded, assays are uncut and undiluted, and true widths are unknown.

How 228 metres at 1.79 g/t stacks up against the two holes before it

The company's statement is specific. On a grade-thickness basis, this is the best gold hole drilled at Oculto. Grade-thickness is grade multiplied by length, and it is the usual way to compare one intercept with another, because a long hole of ordinary grade and a short rich one can carry the same amount of metal.

Worked out loud, 228 metres times 1.79 grams per tonne is about 408 gram-metres. The previous record holder, a hole reported in May 2025, works out to about 309 gram-metres. The new hole carries about a third more gold, measured this way, spread over seven times the length.

The last column is this desk's multiplication of the company's figures; the release gives no gram-metre values of its own.

The richest 11 metres carry about 43 per cent of the hole's gold. Take them out and the other 217 metres average about 1.07 grams per tonne, by this desk's arithmetic on the release's figures.

The three other holes in the release returned shorter and lower-grade gold intervals, along with two silver-only runs in DDH-26-051. They are in the company's table; the hole the day turned on is DDH-26-061.

Diablillos is a silver-led deposit: the reserve holds 184 million ounces of silver against 1.8 million ounces of gold, and the measured and indicated tank-leach oxides average 65 grams of silver per tonne.

Those tank-leach oxides are the higher-grade subset of the 232 million tonnes of measured and indicated oxides, which average 33 grams of silver per tonne taken as a whole. This hole averaged 12.1 grams of silver per tonne; the company describes it as a high-grade gold zone, and any weight it carries in a future estimate would come from its gold rather than its silver.

David O'Connor, P.Geo., the company's chief geologist, is the qualified person for the technical content of the October 21, 2026 release. The resource itself was estimated by Luis Rodrigo Peralta of INSA Consultora, named in the same release as an independent qualified person. A qualified person is the licensed geologist or engineer who takes professional responsibility for the technical statements in a Canadian company's disclosure.

What one hole does and does not change

The limits of a single hole are set out in the release itself.

The pit design and the reserve rest on a resource model dated April 30, 2026, and this hole is outside it. One intercept, however long, does not change 77.9 million tonnes of reserves or the study's economics by itself. Those figures change when a new estimate is run, and the company has dated the next one for the second quarter of 2027.

Widths are reported as drilled. The hole went in at a dip of 60 degrees. A hole that runs along a mineralised zone rather than across it reports an interval longer than the zone is thick, and the release does not say which this is. The company says the true widths are not yet known.

The average is uncut, as the release says, and the 11 richest metres weigh heavily in it; a resource estimate applies its own capping of extreme values before averaging, and the hole's 1.79 grams per tonne is a drilled average, not an estimate grade.

Continuity with the two earlier high-grade holes is not yet established. The company says further drilling is needed to define the continuity between those two holes, both drilled in 2025, and DDH-26-061.

Each of those points is in the release, and the company has stated most of them in its own words. None of them makes the hole smaller than it is.

The hole also does something plain. It puts 228 metres of continuous oxide gold into one hole, starting 101 metres down, with its richest part about 50 metres under the pit the company intends to dig, in ground the current model does not count. The company says the result supports the continuity of high-grade zones within a broad mineralised envelope, with possible extensions sideways and deeper, and it has three rigs turning and follow-up holes planned around this one to test both. A CSAMT survey, a ground geophysical method that maps how well rock conducts electricity in order to trace structures at depth, is under way over the whole Oculto system.

The hole is a real result and a single one. The drilling that turns a single hole into a zone is the work the company says it is doing now, and the document that can put that zone into the count is the resource update it has dated.

A 12 per cent day for a C$2.1 billion company

On the Toronto Stock Exchange the stock closed at C$12.70, up 12.49 per cent on the day, per end-of-day data on TMX Money read at 15:16 Pacific on October 21, 2026.

The day's range ran from C$11.45 to C$12.81, and 1,460,424 shares changed hands on the exchange, per the same end-of-day data.

At the closing price the company's 165,492,573 listed shares were worth about C$2.1 billion, and the stock's range over the past year ran from C$5.51 to C$19.89.

The company's most recent share sale was priced at C$14.70. A bought deal announced at C$45 million on July 22, 2026 was reported closed on July 29, 2026 at C$49,994,700 in gross proceeds for 3,401,000 shares, with the over-allotment option exercised in full, according to the company's release of that day.

Kinross Gold Corporation, which holds participation rights, took a further 139,241 shares at the same price for about C$2,046,843 in a concurrent private placement the company announced as closed on July 31, 2026. The company said the net proceeds would fund the advancement of Diablillos, including early works and long-lead equipment procurement, and general corporate purposes.

Both closings fall after the date of the company's latest filed interim statements, which cover the three and six months ended June 30, 2026 and show cash and cash equivalents of C$8.1 million and working capital of C$18.9 million at June 30, 2026, with the July offering and placement recorded as subsequent events.

On September 9, 2026 the company said it had been named to the 2026 TSX30, the exchange's annual ranking of its 30 top-performing listed companies, on a dividend-adjusted share price gain of 904 per cent over the three years to June 30, 2026.

The dated steps run from the coming weeks to 2029

Phase VI, the drilling campaign that produced this hole, has put about 13,500 metres into 51 holes since January 2026, plus about 2,000 metres in 13 condemnation holes, which are drilled where plant and waste facilities will sit to make sure no ore lies under them. Three rigs are active after a third was mobilised, and the company expects to finish the programme by year-end 2026, with more assays pending. Drilling continues at Oculto West and Oculto East and along the trend toward the JAC zone, with first-pass and follow-up work at Cerro Viejo and the adjacent Condoryacu property.

Two studies follow the drilling. A heap-leach preliminary economic assessment, which is an early-stage economic study with less detail than a feasibility study, is expected "in the coming weeks," the company said. This one evaluates a second phase that would treat low-grade material the feasibility study's tank-leach plan classed as waste. Heap leaching stacks crushed rock on a lined pad and trickles solution through it, a cheaper method suited to lower grades.

The final investment decision on Phase 1, the board's formal commitment to build, is scheduled for the second quarter of 2027, and the company targets first production before the end of 2029. An updated resource estimate is expected in the same quarter as the decision. The release describes early works and procurement as ramping up. The July money is earmarked, in the company's own words, for advancing Diablillos, including early works and long-lead equipment; the study's initial capital of US$722 million is a separate figure, and the decision to commit it is the one scheduled for 2027.

The pit design dates from June and the hole beneath it from this week; the updated resource estimate that can bring the two together is dated for the second quarter of 2027.