Member Info for adamsmithfreethi

Sorry RTN I think you are being overly optimistic. Forecasts of AISCs are notoriously finger in the air. Particularly so with underground mining. With open pit it's much easier to assess the overall grade of the body you are mining and thus forecasts are somewhat more accurate. With underground you are often literally drilling into ore you are mining in the next few quarters. Consequently you are constantly being surprised sometimes on the upside, sometimes on the downside. At the moment SHG are a high cost producer as they go through lower grade ore. I think it is rash to assume the grade automatically goes up to levels were you can claim AISCs around the $1000 level.
Realistic or pessimistic - take your choice

Nice one Colonel! Getting out of HOC was dodging a monster bullet. I don't have any Peruvian assets but do read and listen avidly to events beyond these shores and generally outside the pampered introspective West. I would like to think had I any Peruvian assets I would have got out smartish once the last election result was known. Who know?
I like your bet on Petrofac. Brave but boldly contrarian. Good luck with that.
I guess by big contrarian bet is macro in nature. Namely that business in the West has been absurdly overbid and overpriced (the likes of Petrofac excepting) and there is value in certain industries operating in out of favour countries where the markets are mixing up their distaste of that country's politics with the big bad man's appetite to do business. Call it the Chinese model if you will. No every country qualities nor every industry or company.

By some mad coincidence I dipped my feet in the water last week. Not so much ecstatic about SHG but, because they are a high cost producer, they'll benefit disproportionally from the bump in gold prices. If they hold.
So now Colonel I think we have switched sides. Haha!
Actually much of what you say is true. They'll be no great movement in the share price unless gold really takes off and Tanzania seems to find ways of taking disproportionate amounts of any cash generated through opaque takes and VAT inputs that never get reimbursed. Still I thought a small punt would be worth it.
Btw todays announcement is really bread and butter stuff since against they good grades highlighted were several holes with no significant intersects.
Underground miners like SHG must continually find grades just to keep going. That's why Kenya is so important but that's years away...

ConMan - fair does you got a good price and I admire your faith (that all would be well).

In the past I've invested in 3 companies that had fraud. I lost 10,50,67 percent respectively on them. In the end they all got delisted so if I hadn't acted swiftly I would have lost the lot! As a consequence I'm familiar with the pathology, the apparently small fraud that just gets bigger and bigger and the fibs get more than more implausible.
SRB started off this way and I had no way of knowing which way it would go. 66p was good for me because I'd had time to satisfy myself that the fraud went no further than initially reported and the FD and his team were doing a thorough job cleaning up the mess.
As far as your other comments are concerned, couldn't agree more. I thought you summed up HUM very well. Strategically excellent operationally dumb!

I was very nervous and the delay in producing the accounts spent a lot of time assessing whether there was a deeper meaning including communicating with the company. When I was satisfied the delay was just down to having to do a proper job trawling through past years' accounts and the need to restate where necessary I bought at 66p. Not the bottom but I was OK with this because of the new info I had which in my mind de-risked the purchase.
What happened then to this news that the fraud was small and contained. ...

Nothing, nichts, zilch...

And today no news no nothing and yet the share price moves smartly up. No other UK goldy is behaving in a similar fashion (although HUM has a similar bump yesterday)

What's up Mr (insider) Market?

A darling of the market on a PE of 1000+ announces a poll to allow the founder to partly bail because he's bricking it that the share price is going to do an Icarus. The grateful shareholders give him permission (actually he'd already made the arrangements) and after a little consideration the share price recovers to where it was. Meanwhile his nemesis backs a wannabe competitor which IPOs. It skyrockets (Geddit?) not surprising since the MP manual tells you that although it has no production, no earnings, no nothing it's bound to be worth a fortune cos Jeff says so. In fact it's only asset is a former employee of the 1st plutocrat let's hope he has health insurance
Meanwhile a well managed, excellently positioned miner announces a 15-20% increase in reserves i.e. 15-20% of REAL NPV and the share price rises by.....1.5%.

SIMPLES - YOU KNOW IT MAKES SENSE!

Bonker thanks for your clear explanation and the link to the Torygraph. Interestingly the poll came out 80:20 ditch the cash. That to me says a lot about current investor sentiment. As far as spreading the money around couldn't agree more. For the record I have money in SPGP, AAZ, HUM,CEY, CORA,SRB,SHG,EDV,GDP and on the P6 side THS & SLP.
Let's hope it's not a case of fools seldom differ...

Whilst I share the general enthusiasm for gold I've read somewhere that London has obtained an exemption from B3 rules. Surprise surprise all the liquidity has moved to London. Does anybody know how long the exemption will last? I can't remember where I read the article but I've found an analogous piece here
https://www.mining-journal.com/gold-and-silver-news/news/1413579/london-banks-get-exemption-from-gold-clearing-rules

Oh and try and work out which country you're in.

As far as I was aware HUM are not operating in either Alaska or Cameroon. Even if they were, the Alaska article mentions delays of up to 3 months. The last communication from HUM was 5 August. For the numerically challenged as geographically challenged that's more than 3 months.
BT are you Dan Betts? If so I'm beginning to be afraid, very afraid...
Stop excusing yourself, get off your butt and start delivering for the shareholders!!!

Besides being complete muppets as far a running an efficient mining business is concerned why are we talking about these outstanding drilling results. I'm sure if I trawl back through past RNSs and media interviews these were promised months ago.
Yeah yeah I know we are given yet another excuse of delays in testing from the labs but seriously has anybody else heard of miners in the Mali complaining? Not Cora certainly. Something smells and it's not fragrant!

For my sins I bought another slug today. The reasoning being that if these prices hold then even those muppets in the executive suite will find themselves in charge of a newly profitable business.
That is if they don't lose any more equipment to lack of spares etc. The ingenuity of their excuses always surprises on the upside! Shame nothing else does!

That's a brave call considering you don't know me. Happy to take a bet though...

I intend to subject the management to a little bit of cross examination as regards the excavators. I want a blow by blow account of exactly what happened what went wrong, how and when. I need to make up my mind whether the management are so clueless that their undoubted success strategically is going to be undermined by the utter incompetence when it comes to their day job.

No question for this quarter who performed better although for long suffering shareholders it was more a question of the least worst being the winner. SHG burnt through cash of 4.6m but HUM went through 13.4m . Both are actively drilling and proving up reserves but the almost comical admission from HUM that they can't keep key excavators in operation appeared to be the problem. Whilst Eric appeared somewhat tetchy in doing the Q3 media rounds at least he appeared!
Much news flow before the Q4s and of course Crimble crimped and curtailed as it may be maybe HUM might start catching up!

Dan needs to break cover and put some flesh on the bones of the Q3 RNS. Face the cameras! He can blather all he wants about the new mine but HUM has to be competent on its existing mine if I am to have faith they can profitably exploit the new one!

Thought I'd just read through a seeking alpha commentary on CEY. The basics were OK but the commentator banged on about CEY being a single mine owner and only in a Tier 2 country. At the end he disclosed his holdings which of course were in a Tier 1 country. I've looked up one of these Karora resources. It's worth around £300m but on an annualised basis only makes around £10 million profit on an output of 115k ish. It's all about increasing the amounts that come out of the ground apparently rather than what ends up in the accounts

You might be able to swap in and out of stocks free of commission but you are not free of bid/offer. Unless you know what your doing and then have a big slice of lady luck the House always wins on these transactional type activities.
You are right, the only way reliably to make a profit is to do your research, stay patient stay invested but always ready to bail if your understanding of the company and its activities turns out to be wrong on the downside.

Many years ago when I was a young and keen management consultant I went head to head with an active fund manager debating the virtues of active versus passive. I argued for passive on the basis that Mr Market was an efficient sort of chap and thus nobody could consistently beat him up.
Well how wrong and right I was. Yes passive funds have conquered the world but if markets approached efficiency then, they certainly don't look efficient now, particularly in dusty little corners like junior miners. I've ground my teeth as such holdings as AAZ, THS, CEY and HUM have slowly sunk down even while the prices of their output have largely stayed stable thus guaranteeing good profits if they are well run companies. I had a small holding in CORA which I regarded as too far from pouring gold to increase it and have watched as the stellar results caused the share price to lift off. I failed to sell at 20 because I missed the RNS so have waited until the attention deficient mob have sold out because the stellar news flow cannot be indefinitely maintained.
I thought I have spent my last dime on THS at 100 but have now found some more cash (TSG cash offer) and have doubled my CORA holding - two lots at 12.98. Let's see if this is the bottom...

OK thanks for the swift response and putting me straight! I think I understand the setup better now...