Member Info for Daisan

Billybill557, AGQ mines for lithium? I think that this is some way from reality. They haven't even found any yet, let alone mine for it.

Pablo2, You are right of course about HUM - they have recently moved into production. I have seen all possible reactions by the market to companies moving into production from sharp rises to sharp falls. So difficult to call and I confess that I haven't worked out the rhyme or reason for them. I do prefer producers as they are simpler to value and a commodity bull market will always translate into share price rises, even if that translation is bizarrely delayed. This can lead to spectacular appreciation. Of course, the key is not buying but selling and as commodities are cyclical, you do eventually have to sell. Even though HUM may talk about a share buy back due to the low share price I find this difficult to believe. It strikes me more of an exercise to talk up the share price. They will have plenty of things to spend their money on for the foreseeable future.

From a technical perspective, the longer the base, the greater the strength of the subsequent move. The metaphor often used is that of a coiled spring. Once again I will say that the share price action here is all very normal for an AIM share. There is no conspiracy here. I am sorry if those who bought at 12p feel that they have been misled. They haven't and there is only one person I can see who thinks this. This is a company with excellent assets and a professional, experienced team who have done this all before. I have no problem with people using TA but for goodness sakes don't go blaming the company when you call it wrong. Just learn from your mistakes.

sparkyboy1, Apologies for not answering sooner. I should point out I am just a keen amateur - there are many on these boards that know far more than I do. I have to confess that I think most gold miners on the UK market are pretty poor! That said, their market caps are also pretty low so that mitigates the risk. I can't think of any gold miner that does not have some form of risk associated with it, whether that is geopolitical, execution or otherwise. Then again, that is true of most miners so I am probably being a bit unfair. Personally, I think that the two cheapest producers on the market are SHG and ALTN. The former is in Tanzania, which has been having a battle with Acacia for the last year and clearly wants to make life difficult for miners. The latter has been struggling with funding and improving production whilst going underground and have an even more dominant shareholder than CGH. So risks to both of them but they are cheap as a result. AAZ looks like a decent operation now that they have improved their production outlook but it is not quite the bargain it once was and its profit sharing arrangement with the government is quite costly. Of the big producers, HOC is great, CEY is quality but comparatively expensive (although even here there have been geopolitical risks) whilst POG and HGM are substantially cheaper but deservedly so as they have performed poorly in the past. PAF is also cheap. Of the explorers/non-producers DALR is the highest quality but I like HUM as well. Obviously CGH! The rest are a bit of a mixed bag. Whilst it is a small scale producer, AAU has some interesting upside from an exploration point of view with Salinbas in the Hot Maden region. I have to say that, despite my view that there is a lack of quality on the market, this is countered by the fact that I am very, very bullish on the medium-long term outlook for gold prices. In such a scenario it is difficult to go too far wrong and even the dross gets bid up (in fact, arguably the rubbish performs the best as the market caps have generally been beaten down).

Indeed. Not a great fan of such dominant shareholdings but we are where we are.

Hmmm. For a TA person he spends an awful lot of time with emotional responses. Something that TA is supposed to remove from the equation. The price movements that he consistently states as manipulation are fully explained by TA theory (Fibonacci, etc.) even if after the fact. A share price that is 'kept down' around a certain price is forming a base. ARS is certainly not unique in this. I follow another company that has been basing for almost a year now. Nothing unusual. Anyway each to their own.

The valuation is odd but then there are some odd value disconnects on AIM currently.

kenj, There is no standard gold price for JORC resources. Companies tend to specify a price that is deemed to be realistic or that presents the picture they want to present. Both are legitimate but if the latter doesn't seem so, consider a very low grade deposit that has 50m oz of contained gold. At $1200/oz they may only be able to declare a resource of 3m oz, say, but this would take no account of the potential should the gold price rise. By declaring at $1800/oz the resource is declared at 50m oz. I don't consider this example to be cheating as it is very clear that the price is materially above the current price but indicates the potential should that price be reached. This is what is known as an optionality play. A couple of examples on the market (but not gold) - URU's Zebediela project has a significant resource and NPV based on a nickel price of $8.50/lb whereas the current price is $6.10/lb so this is not currently economically viable. However, the economics get increasingly strong above $8.5/lb. - BMN's Mokopane project has a huge Vanadium resource at a V2O5 price of $7.50/lb. A couple of years ago the V2O5 price was $3/lb so this was way out of the money and, as such, was also an optionality play. The V2O5 price is now $14/lb so the resource is very strongly economically viable now (in fact I make the NPV about $1.5bn now). Incidentally, BMN has just about the largest value of economic in the ground resources I know of on AIM. The comparison with POG is quite an interesting one. POG has struggled enormously in recent years and its valuation has suffered accordingly. They have done the odd appalling deal as well. However, they are getting their act together although their overall AISC is still quite high. They produce over 400k oz per year and their EV is approaching $1bn. I believe that CGH will ultimately have a comparable resource to POG in this single deposit which just goes to show the annual production that this could support at some point. I would be hopeful that the resource could be mined more efficiently than POG have achieved.

Strange. I didn't read Yorkie's post in that way.

I believe that the 12:08 transaction was probably a sell, so sells and buys roughly in balance. This marries up quite well with a view I have had that there is a fairly significant sell programme here that is being gradually worked so as not to upset the price. Interestingly there appear to be quite a few of these across miners currently.

Toephur, It is fairly typical that any rise will result in some selling. Strong rises will ultimately lead to strong selling. And so it goes on. You either attempt to trade these rises/falls (most people do not do this successfully) or you go with what your research tells you and you ride it out. AIM tends to be hope/news driven, usually the hope of news! With the regular news flow due this should keep the share price reasonably active, hopefully in a positive sense.

Sorry, the second quote was from the latest fund raising RNS. It should also be stated that this is speculation and shouldn't be taken as fact!

I think that it was pretty evident that I wasn't a great fan of the recent resource statement released by the company. I do believe that they were put in a difficult position but, even so, the definition of the resource at a $1500/oz gold price was a little bit difficult to accept even though I think that there is a strong possibility that gold will be at or above this price by the time production is due to commence in 2020. With this in mind, I thought that I would have a look at statements made in the latest fund raising RNSs. The following statements are most significant to my mind. Firstly, from the original fund raise RNS in December: "To date, only 2.2 kilometres ("km") of the 6.0km Tulkubash resource potential in the mining licence has been drilled, and this drilling has shown mineralisation to be consistently continuous along strike. Significant along-strike resource potential has been defined through a mixture of channel sampling and soil geochemistry along trend to the north-east. A systematic exploration programme is being planned, targeting extension of the resource base in parallel with the construction of the heap leach project. This should allow the scale of the Tulkubash heap leach project to be expanded quickly at a low capital cost once production has commenced." "The Company's recently completed resource update, as announced on 31st January 2018, has served to further validate the Company's belief in the upside exploration potential of the Tulkubash oxide zone. Any contemplated financing, expected to occur in Q2 2018, will include a significant allocation for exploration drilling to add to the oxide resource, with an anticipated budget at least equal to that of 2017 and possibly significantly higher." It couldn't be clearer without specifically stating a target that they feel that the Tulkubash oxide zone has scope for considerable expansion and that they will be developing the operation with this in mind so that additional reserves can be accessed cost effectively. Furthermore, the target for expansion over 6kms is specifically stated as within the mining licence, has the same soil geochemistry as the explored strike and that drilling has shown the mineralisation to be consistent. I don't think that it is a wild jump (although not one that they could state explicitly) to project the current 2.2km strike over 6kms. Assuming consistency and continuity (a big assumption but one that is consistent with currently known facts) this gives a maximum potential oxide/open pit resource on the mining licence of about 2.7m oz. If the sulphide resource was consistent, this would have a maximum potential resource of about 14.5m oz for a combined total of about 17.2m oz. Based on previous comments, it is clear that the strike extends considerably beyond the licence area. There is some potential for expanding this should they prove up the additional resource indicated.

I tend to agree that 100k oz production from 2019 is a pipe dream. However, I think that I am slightly more optimistic about production levels than you as I believe that it is possible to achieve 60k oz in that time frame which is the target of this latest phase of development. I believe that this is the case on the basis that the infrastructure is already in place to process the necessary material. What has been lacking is the grade (which should be coming through now as the underground operations move forwards) and the necessary equipment to shift a greater tonnage. This latest fund raise should go some way to achieving this which gives some support for a 60k oz projection. As to whether this will be cash generative, I believe that there is reason for optimism on this as well. Recent accounts have suggested that the cost of production is likely to be relatively low as production ramps up and the latest fund raise is at a reasonable rate. The key factor will be the gold price of course. I am optimistic in the medium-long term for gold although in the short term there could be a technical decline. Nothing ever goes up in a straight line and we should expect ups and downs over the next few months and years.

2018 promises to be as significant in many ways as 2017 was, perhaps even more so. Firming up and increasing Beutong will flag this as a significant asset to the majors. It will be particularly interesting to see how deep this extends and whether the mineralisation intensifies at depth. Any suggestion that this is the case will have majors sniffing at the door. Asiamet has two areas of interest which for me is usually one too many. Progressing one asset is hard enough for an explorer, two even more so and the financial strains can be too great in these circumstances if both assets are to be developed appropriately. Having the management team that we have goes a great way to ameliorate this as they can attract the necessary support. At some point a significant injection of capital will be required to develop either one of these to production. I believe that Beutong is just too big to develop in isolation but KSK can be developed incrementally as the value is increasingly discovered through exploration. As such, my preferred option would be to firm up Beutong and either JV through to production with a free carry or. more preferably, sell it for sufficient capital to bring KSK to a point where it is at or close to self sufficiency. I am not sure whether KSK will ever match Beutong in terms of scale but I do think that it is significantly greater than we have so far seen and that the deposits are amenable to several smaller scale operations around a central ore body. Clearly the polymetallic nature of this would make for a robust operation going forwards with significant amounts of copper, lead, zinc and precious metals. And perhaps even diamonds :-)

As I indicated, there are several price drivers for 2018. Whether or not Beutong is priced in (and nobody knows this), drill results on this should give a boost to the share price for a while. I am pretty convinced that some form of corporate action will result in appropriate price discovery at some point in the next 12-24 months.

A good day today. Drill results for Beutong should be received positively but eventually there will be "assay fatigue" and results will no longer cause rises. But there are plenty of other drivers as well. Development funding,whether via JV, sale or otherwise, will be there most significant mover, although the BFS for BKM and JORC resource for BKZ should also be well received. The latter will not be huge - this has been clearly flagged by TM, so don't expect anything as significant as Beutong or even BKM. All in all there should be sufficient coming along in 2018 to keep things turning over.

An interesting move but I think that your title falls into the "rumours of my death have been greatly exaggerated" category!

After a pause, presumably for Chinese New Year, Vanadium is continuing it's run higher with V2O5 now over $13/lb everywhere and FeV firmly over $60/kg. The deposit here is big but very low grade so constitutes an optionality play. I notice that the studies have prices for Uranium a lot higher than current prices which reinforces the optionality play. Have you worked out the $/tonne asset value? The scoping study suggests that it is amenable to heal leaching, which is good, but it would be interesting to understand at what point the project would be viable enough to attract the substantial capital necessary to progress. Options for a smaller scale project?

Excellent news!