55% for Radius Gold on Permission to Drill in Peru

The release does not say how many holes will be drilled. It does not say how many metres, or how deep, or what the programme will cost, or when exactly it starts beyond an intention to begin before the end of the year. Money is not mentioned anywhere in it.

What it does say is that Radius Gold Inc. has permission to drill. The Gerencia Regional de Energía y Minas of the Regional Government of Arequipa, the body that issues exploration authorisations in that part of Peru, has authorised exploration activities including drilling on the Ferruginosa I-400 concession, the main target area at the company's Tierra Roja copper project in the district of Ático, Province of Caravelí, in southern Peru. The release went out over TheNewswire on 7 October 2026.

The sentence is smaller than the share price suggests and it is a real one. Permission was the thing that had been missing, and the company now reports it in hand.

Why a yes took the better part of two years

The ground at Tierra Roja is unoccupied state land, which in Peru means a company needs two separate permissions before a regional authority will let it drill: an environmental authorisation, and a surface right granted by the Superintendencia Nacional de Bienes Estatales, the national agency that administers state-owned property. Only then does the mining authority issue its own authorisation.

Radius reported receiving the environmental authorisation in 2025, covering the planned drill platforms and the access to them. In January 2026 the mining authority approved the technical review for surface access and passed the file to the property agency. In March 2026 that agency granted provisional surface access, and the company applied to drill. The authorisation then stalled on an observation about the project's coordinates. Radius appealed, and the appeal was upheld.

The access Radius holds today is the provisional kind. According to the release it allows exploration to go ahead while a definitive surface easement is finalised, which is a working arrangement rather than a settled one. No expected date for the definitive easement appears in the release.

One more omission matters to anyone sizing the asset. Radius does not own Tierra Roja outright. The company's own project pages describe an option agreement signed in September 2024 to acquire the project, and the 7 October release does not restate the terms of that option or how much is left to pay or spend under it.

What was actually sampled, and what came back

Alongside the permitting news, the company said it has collected more rock-chip geochemical samples over a wider area away from the core target and sent them to the laboratory. No results are reported. A rock chip is a sample broken off exposed rock at surface; it tells you what is in that piece of rock and nothing about how much of it there is underneath.

The release is candid about a practical problem. Extensive caliche, a hard crust of calcium carbonate that forms in dry climates and seals the ground surface, stopped the company running a systematic sampling grid. Radius says it is evaluating shallow percussion drilling or auger sampling to reach material below that crust. The company is reporting, in its own release, that the surface geochemistry at Tierra Roja is harder to sample than it looks, and proposing two methods to get under the crust.

Luke Longridge, the company's President, is quoted saying he is "extremely pleased that we finally have the authorizations required to commence drilling" and that arrangements are being made to start as soon as possible. He is also the qualified person who approved the technical content under National Instrument 43-101. Simon Ridgway, Chief Executive and Chairman, issued the release on behalf of the board.

The balance sheet behind the permission

Radius publishes its interim statements on its own website, and the six months to 30 June 2026 were authorised for issue on 25 August 2026. According to those statements:

Cash and cash equivalents of C$492,930. Total liabilities of C$499,828, of which C$444,070 is current. Working capital of C$582,829. A net loss of C$568,177 for the six months. 115,704,251 common shares outstanding, no warrants, and 7,520,000 options of which 6,520,000 were vested and exercisable.

Note 1 of those statements says the company's continuing losses raise significant doubt about its ability to continue as a going concern. A going-concern note is a formal accounting disclosure with a defined meaning: the directors are flagging that the business cannot fund itself indefinitely from what it has.

Exchange data on 7 October 2026 showed about 126.15 million shares outstanding, roughly 10.4 million more than at 30 June, so the company has issued stock in the interval. Nothing in the 7 October release describes that issuance or any financing attached to it.

Radius funds its work largely through partners rather than from its own treasury. Its Amalia project in Chihuahua is drilled under an agreement with Pan American Silver, and its Holly project in Guatemala is a joint venture with Volcanic Gold Mines. Partner funding is a legitimate and well-established model for a company this size, and it has kept two Radius projects drilling on other people's budgets. It is also why a cash balance under half a million dollars does not automatically stop a programme, and why the release's silence on how the Peru drilling is paid for is the open question rather than a quibble.

The day, worked out in dollars

Here is the arithmetic, in steps.

The shares closed at C$0.225 on the TSX Venture Exchange on 7 October 2026, up 55.2 per cent, which puts the previous close at about C$0.145. Trading ranged between C$0.18 and C$0.24 through the session. Volume on the venture exchange was about 2.70 million shares against a 30-day average of 77,296, roughly 35 times a normal day. The volume-weighted average price was C$0.2059.

Multiply the volume by that average price and the day's turnover comes to about C$556,000. The company's entire cash balance at 30 June 2026 was C$492,930. More money changed hands in the stock on Wednesday than the company had in the bank at its last published balance date.

Multiply the share count by the price move and the market value went from roughly C$18.3 million to about C$28.38 million. Call it C$10 million of market value added by an authorisation letter. All of these price, volume and share-count figures are 15-minute delayed secondary market data from QuoteMedia, not verified against SEDAR+; the cash and share figures at 30 June come from the company's own published statements.

What a drill authorisation is

It is a legal permission, issued by a named regional authority, for a named concession. It converts a project that could not be drilled into one that can. Radius had carried this target through an environmental authorisation, a technical review, a provisional surface grant, an agency observation and a successful appeal, and the regional authority has now signed off on all of it. For a company whose main copper target had been waiting on paperwork since 2025, the binding constraint is gone, and 35 times average volume is the market registering that.

It is not a hole, an assay, a resource or a dollar of revenue. Tierra Roja has no mineral resource estimate of any kind, and the sampling results in hand are a set of chips on their way to a lab. Between the permission and the first core box sit a drill contract under negotiation, access under preparation, a camp under construction and a provisional easement awaiting its definitive form, all four described as such in the release.

A company with C$492,930 and permission to drill is in a better position than a company with C$492,930 and no permission. It is still a company with C$492,930.

Transparency note. This is an independent due-diligence analysis and editorial opinion piece produced by The Maple Markets editorial desk. It is not sponsored, promoted or commissioned, and no compensation of any kind has been received from Radius Gold Inc. (TSXV: RDU), Pan American Silver Corp. (TSX: PAAS) or Volcanic Gold Mines Inc. (TSXV: VG), or any party acting on their behalf. The analysis is based on public disclosure available as of the publish date; every figure is attributed to its primary source. The Maple Markets and its authors may hold positions in securities mentioned; nothing here is a recommendation to buy, sell or hold any security, and readers should not treat it as investment advice. Past disclosure does not guarantee future results. Policies: Editorial Standards · Financial Disclaimer.