ngl3 Oct 2011 22:05
Norseman – results **** poor so why am I buying?
You may wonder why our fund has been buying Norseman (NGL) so aggressively when the results out today are to put it frankly **** poor. I am not mad. In case you wondered and in fact I have just bought a shed load more shares for the SF t1ps Gold Fund and here is why.
Output last year was below forecast at c50,000 oz and the company reported a loss of $12.9 million. I kind of expected that. The year end was June 30th. Since then mine 3 has come onstream. And we are now told that by Q2 ( ie Oct-Dec) mine 4 will be onstream.
So output this year will be what exactly. The management was shooting for 100,000 oz. That may well be achievable. But a minimum of 80,000 oz is on the cards so lets work on a range of 80,000 to 100,000 oz at a cash cost of $900 -$1000 ( it depends on output). Lets go with 2 possible average gold prices – $1500 and $1800 ( although I reckon even $1800 is far too low).
On the lower output, higher cost, lower gold price we look at operating cashflow of $40 million. On the higher output so lower cost and higher gold price we are looking at $90 million. Just As a fun game at $2000 gold you are looking at $110 million.
The market cap at 29p is c£51 million – call it $80 million. So you get cashflow multiples of 2 ( worst case) down to well under 1. You can do the maths as well as I can: this is what they term a nil brainer.
Tom Winnifrith
Senior Fund Manager www.t1psim.com