10X is Days Away From Drilling at Balerion

Drilling is coming.

Exultant Mining (ASX: 10X) is days away from putting a rig on the prospect formerly known as Peak View.

This morning the company confirmed approval is through, contractors are booked, and twelve holes are locked in at its New South Wales project. The targets carry copper, lead, zinc, silver and gold.

It’s also been renamed. What was Peak View prospect is now the Balerion prospect. Game of Thrones fans will know the name.

10X has been working towards this drill program since listing in December.

The 900-metre soil anomaly, the IP and gravity surveys that defined targets along an untested mineralised corridor, and the structural work tying it back to a fault that runs north to Captains Flat, one of NSW’s biggest historic base metal mines.

At 16.5c, with a company valuation of a tiny $6 million, the market is showing very little interest in what’s about to unfold.

A fully funded 12-hole drill campaign is days away from starting on ground that has already delivered high-grade hits in historical drilling, yet there’s no real attention on it.

That disconnect is where the opportunity sits. The setup is there, the targets are defined, and the metals in play are the ones the market is chasing. What hasn’t happened yet is the market catching up.

Every step has pointed at the next few weeks. It’s go-time.

“We very close to commencement of drilling and unlocking the secrets of Balerion. This is exactly what we have been working towards and this will become a pivotal point for 10X and our shareholders”

– 10X Executive Chairman, Brett Grosvenor

From Peak View to Balerion

Peak View is now named Balerion. The Peak View Project sits about 100km south of Canberra, near Cooma.

The project keeps its name, but the flagship prospect inside it has been rebadged.

Balerion the Black Dread was the largest dragon ever to fly in the Game of Thrones series.

Quite the name to slap on your flagship drill program.

Whether the geology lives up to the branding is what the next few weeks will tell us.

Where the Rig is Pointed

10X has spent the past six months building the case for where to put the rig.

The soil work showed metals leaking up to the surface across a 900-metre stretch. The IP and gravity surveys then showed where those metals are concentrated underground.

Before any of that, two different explorers drilled holes into this ground and hit serious metal.

One came back with 4.4 metres at 342 g/t silver, 4% lead and 1.1% copper from 48 metres downhole. Any mining company today would be over the moon to find that.

The other hit a half-metre slug of nearly pure zinc and lead at 22% and 11.6%, deeper down.

Then they walked away.

That’s what happened to a lot of ground in NSW in the 90s when metal prices were in the bin and nobody was funding the follow-up.

Fast forward to 2026 and the picture has flipped.

Silver has more than tripled in two years. Copper inventories are at multi-year lows. Zinc and lead are running with them. All are higher in price than they were twelve months ago.

The metals these old holes hit are the ones the world is now short of. Grades like this are worth chasing again.

Twelve holes will test three things.

Six of them go after the fattest part of the underground anomaly, where the surface chemistry and the geophysics light up strongest in the same spot.

That’s where the company thinks the engine of the system might be sitting. Copper-heavy, sulphide-rich, and the kind of zone that can host real volumes if it’s there.

This is a proven region with high-grade hits.

Another batch follows the same mineralised horizon as those two old high-grade hits.

The geophysics says the system carries on right next to where the previous drillers stopped. These holes step out from the old work and test whether the metal keeps going.

The last few sit close to a regional fault that runs north into Captains Flat.

Captains Flat was one of NSW’s biggest base metal mines. It produced lead, zinc, copper, silver and gold from the 1880s through to 1962.

The fault that fed it runs straight through 10X’s ground.

Faults like that are the plumbing that move metal-rich fluids through rock.

When one has already built a mine the size of Captains Flat, drilling next to it beats drilling somewhere random.

The only thing missing is a modern drill program.

That’s about to start.

The Woodlawn Method

The same exploration recipe 10X is running at Balerion is the one that found Woodlawn in the 1970s.

Soil sampling first. Then IP and gravity surveys to figure out where the metals are sitting underground. Then drilling.

Woodlawn turned out to be one of NSW’s most significant base metal discoveries.

Today it’s owned by Develop (ASX: DVP), sitting at around a $1.8 billion market cap, and Trafigura backed it with a US$65 million offtake deal to bring it back into production.

Two different companies, with one a producing mine and the other a 12-hole drill program weeks away from turning.

We’re not pretending they’re the same thing. What we are saying is the recipe has form in this belt.

The geology that made Woodlawn runs through 10X’s ground. And the same method that found it last time is what’s pointing the drill rig now.

What You’re Paying For

At just 16.5 cents with roughly $3.7 million in cash, the enterprise value sits at a mere $2.3 million.

That’s the price of admission for a funded 12-hole drill program on ground that’s already produced high-grade hits in historic drilling.

The register is tight too, with only 37 million shares on issue and no need to raise capital any time soon.

If results land, there aren’t many shares around to absorb the demand.

The Other Two Prospects Sitting in the Wings

Balerion is one of three prospects within the broader Peak View Project.

Big Badja delivered 339 g/t silver from rock chip sampling in March.

Undoo Creek pulled 50.9 g/t gold from rock chips a few weeks before that.

Both prospects sit outside the Balerion program. Both are still in front of 10X to drill when the time comes.

What Happens Next

Earthworks and pad preparation come first, then the drill rig moves on site.

Twelve holes will test the headline anomaly, the extensions of the old high-grade hits, and the ground next to the Captains Flat fault. First results should land within weeks of the rig turning.

Drilling can always disappoint. The history of the ASX is full of explorers that punched holes into sure things and came up with nothing.

But this is what the $6 million market cap is for.

The same exploration recipe found Woodlawn in this belt last time. The fault that fed Captains Flat runs straight through 10X’s ground.

And the metals those old high-grade hits pulled out of the rock are the ones the market is paying premiums to find right now.

When the setup is this tight, you don’t need every hole to come off.

You need one.

We’ve been excited for this rig to start turning since December. Now it actually turns.