Firesteel Resources Inc. - Shareholder Report - January 2014

Trading Symbol: FTR-TSX-V

VANCOUVER, Jan. 27, 2014 /CNW/ -

Overview
Although commodities and the global mining exploration industry in general are both facing many market headwinds, Firesteel has found creative solutions to developing existing properties and acquiring new ones while building our treasury.

In late 2012, amid dire warnings for many under-financed juniors, Firesteel found itself almost out of cash and carrying significant debts.

It became clear that settling our debts and financing Firesteel's ROK Coyote and Copper Creek properties would require a departure from traditional financings. With that in mind we began looking for strategic partners who would both spend the cash required for exploration and who would conduct the necessary exploration to add value to the properties.

As a result, we have two highly prospective flagship properties and we have capable partners investing significant sums of money into their exploration. Firesteel is thus in much better shape currently to weather the downturn in the junior resource market than many of its peers. That said, Firesteel remains cautious in how cash is spent.

Strategic Partners
In May 2013, a term sheet for an option and joint venture agreement on the Copper Creek property (now renamed Sheslay) was signed with Prosper Gold (TSX-V: PGX) and closed in September 2013.

Also in May 2013, a term sheet for an option and joint venture agreement on the ROK Coyote property was signed with Oz Minerals of Australia (ASX:OZL), who announced in December 2013 that it had completed its due diligence and would begin a second round of drilling as soon as the weather allowed access.

If all parts of these deals are exercised, they will collectively result in $18 million being spent on exploration on the properties and an injection into the Firesteel treasury of $2.4 million cash and 1 million Prosper Gold shares over four years.

Promising early drill results have been released on the Sheslay property. These drill results on one of 5 large targets are comparable to many of the drill holes on both the Red Chris property and on Colorado Resources North ROK property. The star target appears to be a large target with mineralization at surface and open at a depth of 598 metres. Drill results can be found at http://www.firesteelresources.com/s/news.asp?ReportID=609345

Oz Minerals has drilled about 1700 metres on the ROK Coyote property. Drilling enabled testing of geophysical anomalies and has allowed for the features to be characterised and used to prioritise other geophysical anomalies on the ROK-Coyote claims. Drilling beneath well-developed gossans suggests that the structural complexity of the area means that expressions observed on surface may not necessarily be reflected at depth. Drilling results show that chargeable conductive zones such as Main Zone are related to highly pyritised (7-8%) volcanic rocks. While the 2013 drilling program failed to return any significant intersections a number of important targeting strategies were tested that will greatly assist future exploration efforts.

Now that due diligence is completed on ROK Coyote, Oz is gearing up so as to be ready for an early start to the 2014 drill program and will be active on the property as soon as weather permits.

Plans for 2014
Both OZ Minerals and Prosper Gold plan to spend the winter months reviewing and interpreting their data and selecting drill targets so as to be ready at the start of the 2014 season.

During 2014, Firesteel will continue to develop its relationships with prospective partners for future deals and reinforce the relationship with its existing partners.

Firesteel's management and board will continue to look for ways to build our treasury and will continue to search for acquisition targets during 2014. This strategy, outlined below, will be dependent on the availability of cash.

Prospect Generator Strategy
Early in 2013 Firesteel changed its business strategy to become a prospect generator focussed on copper porphyries and has reviewed more than 15 properties in North and South America over the last 9 months. It is our desire to only acquire properties with world class potential. To date, none have met our selection criteria.

In order to bring this strategy to life, a decision to strengthen our board with a stellar technical team was made, and 3 new directors were added: David Forest, a geologist and former analyst with Casey Research; Peter Pollard, a world authority on copper porphyries; and Ernest Cleave, a financial executive with extensive experience in the junior mining world. Thus, in addition to our two existing directors, we now have 3 very competent geologists on the board, each bringing very separate and distinct skills that will be invaluable as we evaluate target properties for acquisition. Members of the board are active in the day to day operations of the company.

In addition to the above changes to our board of directors, Ian Fodie has joined as CFO. Ian has extensive public company experience in the junior mining and exploration sector. In addition to this, his M&A experience will be invaluable as we seek out acquisitions.

As part of our new strategy we decided to liquidate non-strategic assets, to this end Firesteel's Virimoa property, a small silver-gold property in Mexico, was sold to Chesapeake Gold (TSX-V:CKG) for US$125,000.

Firesteel will continue looking for a partner to option its Poker property also in the Stikine Arch area. The property shows some high grade gold in rock chip samples from 36 quartz-sulphide boulders up to 2 m in size and which averaged 24.24 g/t gold. The best sample showed 252.16 g/t of gold.

In the short term cash remains tight, so fiscal discipline is the order of the day and we continue to contain costs by avoiding all unnecessary expenses. Active marketing and IR programs will not begin until there is sufficient cash in the treasury to reasonably support these activities.

Share Price Catalysts
The Stikine Arch area of British Colombia, where our properties are located, continues to attract interest as do a number of the explorers and mine developers in the area. Over the next 12 months share price catalysts will mostly be drill results from both Sheslay and ROK Coyote as well as drill results from significant neighbors like Colorado Resources and Serengeti Resources. The acquisition of a quality copper porphyry property in a stable jurisdiction should also benefit the share price if we are able to make a suitable acquisition.

We will continue to seek opportunities for articles by analysts and industry observers. During 2013 we received positive mentions from a number of authors. Copies of these articles can be found at http://www.firesteelresources.com/s/news.asp?daterange=2013/01/01...2013/12/31

Copper Outlook
A recent article by Rick Mills, the owner of www.Aheadoftheherd.com, argues that although there are large untapped copper resources available, based on per capita copper utilization in the western world it is highly probable that demand from urbanization in South East Asia will create severe shortages in the supply of copper between now and 2050. An excerpt of the article states:

" If we mined every last discovered, and undiscovered, pound of land based copper the expected 8.2 billion people in the developing world would only get three quarters of the way towards copper use parity per capita with the U.S.

Of course the rest of us, the other 1.8 billion people expected to be on this planet by 2050, aren't going to be easing up, we're still going to be using copper at prestigious rates while our eastern cousins play catch up.

Copper use parity isn't going to happen, it can't.

It's this author's opinion the developing world will not get a third of the way to our development levels here in the west before we all run out of USGS stated copper resources.

Consider that this game of 'Copper Catch Up' is not going to happen in 100 years, it's happening now.

The world's exploding population, the massive shift from rural to urban, the growth of a very consumption minded middle class in developing countries, it's all happening now.

Add in finite, increasingly hard to source resources.

The effects will felt long before we actually start to run out of copper and there will be severe consequences:

• Rising energy and commodity prices
• A decline in the global economy
• Civil unrest"

Qualified Person

The technical information in this shareholder report has been reviewed by Paul Sarjeant, P.Geo, a Qualified Person under National Instrument 43-101

About the Company

Firesteel is an exploration-stage junior mining company engaged in the acquisition and exploration of prospective precious and base metal properties in Canada and stable jurisdictions around the world.

Firesteel currently has two highly prospective properties in British Colombia.

The ROK Coyote property is currently under option to OZ, a wholly owned subsidiary of OZ Minerals (ASX:OZL). OZ has the right to acquire up to 80% of the property in return for spending US$13,000,000 in exploration expenditures and payment of US$1,500,000 in cash to Firesteel.

Highlights of the ROK Coyote property include:

• 6,900 ha of highly prospective large tonnage targets with known Cu-Au results
• Historical drilling highlights - 38.37 m @ 1.32% Cu, 1.54 g/t Au
• Adjacent to Red Chris Mine development owned by Imperial Metals with P&P Reserves of 302 Mt at 0.365 Cu and 0.27 g/t Au (a 28 year mine life at 30,000 tpd).

The Sheslay property is currently under option to Prosper Gold. (TSX-V: PGX). Under the terms of this agreement, Prosper has the right to acquire up to 80% of the property in return for spending $5,000,000 on exploration and payment of $1,000,000 in cash and 1,000,000 Prosper Gold shares to Firesteel.

Highlights of the Sheslay property include:

• 6,700 Ha property hosts five significant Cu-Au targets within close proximity with large tonnage, high grade potential.
• Historical drilling highlight - grading 242.3 m @ 0.44% Cu & 0.32 g/t Au.
• Largest of the targets is 1,800 m by 750 m.

The Company's management and board of directors have extensive experience in exploration, operations, business and corporate finance.

The Company's objective is to enhance shareholder value as a prospect generator by identifying and securing early-stage exploration opportunities and developing them to more advanced stages with the help of joint venture partners.

For up to the minute news, industry analysis and feedback follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

Neither the TSX Venture Exchange nor its Regulation Services Provider (as that term is defined in the policies of the TSX Venture Exchange) accepts responsibility for the adequacy or accuracy of this release.

Advisory Regarding Forward Looking Statements

This news release contains forward-looking statements. Users of forward-looking statements are cautioned that actual results may vary from forward-looking statements contained herein. Forward-looking statements include, but are not limited to: expectations, opinions, forecasts, projections and other similar statements concerning anticipated future events, conditions or results that are not historical facts. In certain cases, forward-looking statements can be identified by the use of words such as "plans", "expects" or "does not expect", "is expected", "budget", "scheduled", "estimates", "forecasts", "intends", "anticipates" or "does not anticipate", or "believes", or variations of such words and phrases or statements that certain actions, events or results "may", "could", "would", "might" or "will be taken", "occur" or "be achieved". While the Company has based these forward-looking statements on its expectations about future events as at the date those statements were prepared, the statements are not a guarantee of the Company's future performance. Although the Company believes that the expectations reflected in such forward-looking statements are reasonable, it cannot give any assurance that such expectations will prove to be correct.

The Company's forward-looking statements are expressly qualified in their entirety by this cautionary statement and are made as of the date of this new release. Unless otherwise required by applicable securities laws, the Company does not intend nor does it undertake any obligation to update or review any forward-looking statements to reflect subsequent information, events, results or circumstances or otherwise.

SOURCE Firesteel Resources Inc.