Cavendish targets 128% upside for Caledonia Mining as Blanket deep drilling pays off

Caledonia Mining Corporation PLC ( AIM:CMCL NYSE-A:CMCL VFEX:CMCL ) drew strong backing from Cavendish on Friday, as the broker reaffirmed its bullish stance following a major resource upgrade across the miner's Zimbabwean portfolio. The shares were seen at 1,945p, up 4%, as the broker kept its 'buy' rating, digesting the discovery of a shallow oxide orebody and significant underground drilling success. At the heart of the update is a maiden 500,000-ounce resource at the wholly owned Motapa property, situated directly adjacent to the transformational Bilboes project. That geographical proximity is expected to unlock significant operational synergies, potentially allowing the miner to defer extraction at distant deposits to capitalise on shared infrastructure. Back underground, successful deep drilling and development sampling drove a 22% increase in measured and indicated resources at the flagship Blanket mine to 2.2 million ounces. In the same note, Cavendish highlighted a newly identified mineralised horizon at the surface of the Blanket lease, opening the door for low-cost heap-leach processing. That shallow oxide extraction could commence as early as the first half of 2027, unlocking a modest but distinct new source of gold production for the company. Cavendish argued the wider Bilboes development could roughly quadruple the group's attributable annual production to 200,000 ounces, a threshold that might draw larger institutional investors.