Member Info for goldgnome

Well I have finally cancelled our membership to neflix. With Boris at the helm and Trump tweeting like there is no tomorrow, netflix is a pale, poor and expensive subsitiute.

"Johnson also mentioned that he knew an "awful lot" about the arts, having studied painting and drawing at his prep school — a claim on which the newspaper tested him the following day by asking him to complete a 20-question quiz.
It didn't go well."...and it certainly didn't....
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-25/boris-johnson-prime-minister-first-interview-media/11341660

"It was meant to be a dramatic entry to an Olympics viewing party at a London park, with the mayor waving British flags as he raced along a 320-metre zip wire, but it ended awkwardly with him stuck halfway along.
"Can you get me a rope? Get me a rope, OK?" he called to the crowds below.
He was up there for a few minutes before officials pulled him along.
Then British prime minister David Cameron commented at the time:
"If any other politician anywhere in the world was stuck on a zipwire, it would be a disaster. For Boris, it's an absolute triumph."
Triumph out of adverstiy, almost churchillian?! LOL
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-22/boris-johnson-memorable-moments-of-uks-likely-new/11328258

Will be running the refugee express at 8am every day for any self respecting people of english descent? Pick up point for the next week will be Saunton Sands.
Good luck to you all, and go the POG!

the gnome

I would imagine there will be boat loads of refugees fleeing the UK? fairly obvious the political process is seriously in need of a rewrite.

good luck to all of the pommie refugees, hopefully they got all of their gold bars out with them! LOL

the gnome (and

Repression,

Indeed, seems to have been a lot of morphing over the years. LOL

the gnome

Lot of money to pay for a liability?

You gest MrT?

I am very interested in their set of exploration results in Ivory Coast. These sound like more confidence in the model, and a far more likely next mine being started in Ivory Coast, which is probably the best place ot be right now for gold exploration. My guess is there is still a lot of low hanging juiciy fruit in the Ivory Coast, and be great to be a producer, excellent beach front for West Africa Ops ....

Still waiting to see what they do in Burkina Faso, and a mining op friend told me they could make money outh of what they have got without doing any of the fancy met. I notice Capital Drilling (we all know who they are and their links with Centamin) have taken a cornerstone position in a very interesting gold company in Burkina Faso...Boromo Gold...so I get the feeloing that Centamins moving in pervasive ways in West Africa...stealthily...good luck to us all

the gnome

not to mention the nice set of numbers in Cote Ivoire

Q2 Significant Doropo Drill Intercepts
DOROPO

The epxloration section caught my eye ....

·Excellent Horus Deeps exploration results, delineating multiple meaningful high-grade structures 400 metres below current 43-101 defined Sukari underground Reserve and Resource; intercept highlights:
29m @ 6.3g/t, including 11m @ 7.9g/t and
15m @ 6.2g/t;
1m @ 68.4g/t;

Well here it is, will the winners of the prediction game, please take their chips off the table and re-invest in CEY?

Highlights

· Group Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate ("LTIFR") in the second quarter ("Q2") of 0.23 per 200,000 workplace hours;

· Sukari Gold Mine ("Sukari") produced 117,913 ounces of gold in Q2, bringing production for the first half of the year ("H1") to 234,096 ounces and in line with the Company's 45:55 production weighted guidance split for the year; The stronger second half ("H2") is driven by higher grades from the open pit as Stage 4 mining progresses down through the Hapi Zone, as the open pit is scheduled to contribute approximately two thirds of the total H2 ounces;

· Centamin maintains annual guidance for 2019: gold production of 490,000 - 520,000 ounces, at cash costs(1) of US$675-725 per ounce produced and an AISC(1) of US$890-950 per ounce sold; The Company expects costs to trend downwards in line with the scheduled increased production profile in H2;

· Processing plant throughput of 3.4Mt of ore at an increased 96.1% utilisation rate;

· Excellent Horus Deeps exploration results, delineating multiple meaningful high-grade structures 400 metres below current 43-101 defined Sukari underground Reserve and Resource; intercept highlights: 29m @ 6.3g/t, including 11m @ 7.9g/t and 15m @ 6.2g/t; 1m @ 68.4g/t;

· Strong and flexible balance sheet with no debt, no hedging and cash and liquid assets(2) of US$326.6 million, as at 30 June 2019, after payment of US$34.6 million final dividend;

· Detailed Interim Results, including interim dividend, for the six months ended 30 June 2019, will be published on Wednesday 31 July 2019; and

· The Company will publish baseline near-term outlook for 2020 and 2021 on 31 July 2019.

Pushme,

If by chance you take my ramble, then...
You can have a bet on the defense industry at
https://etfdb.com/etfs/industry/aerospace--defense/
Looks a fair bet?

best
the gnome.

Thans Pushme

The Rothchilds, what a lovely subject to waste a day on (but its winter in Oz). Well from one perspective, I guess the argument about having a bet each way has been accepted in gambling lore for many a century, and my experimentation with the law, has been that its not a bad bet, and by and large I seem to get out ahead, as opposed to trying to back the winner.

From another perspective, there is a rival group hanging around these days, who seem to say that both warring parties seem to have good, sound and just arguments, and besides we are not politcal and we treat all religions in a similar and non discrimatory way, and hence ...we will not commit predjudice, and will sell arms and finance to both, being careful not to offer either side any undue advantage...etc
But margins are margins, and margins x2 are far more lucrative than margins x1.

Trump of course is selling arms to all and sundry, and its a great export business for the US. The U.S. has been both the largest exporter of military supplies and the country with the largest military expenditure since the SIPRI started its database in the early 1990s. The U.S.’s outsized share of world arms exports has also increased over the past five years since the previous five-year period through 2013, when 30 percent of world arms exports came from the United States.

So when you have the worlds largest defence budget, and standing army (etc), there is a huge amount of money which has to be earnt to balance the books, so to speak. So selling arms is a good way. So to sell arms (supply), one must create insecurity and hence demand, and then offer all sorts of measures to manage security. Almost a (non) virtuous circle? The concept has been around for along time, and to think that smart financial types have not fed on this is probably a bit naieve?

The bi-product of insecurity, uncertainty and general mayhem (esp like Trump is serving up), is that the "stability of gold" looks good. From a fundamental (sorry for using this word, and I hope it does not divert your thoughts)perspective it is very hard to vary the supply side of gold, and it is getting a lot harder, as exploration is getting more difficult and the low hanging fruit has long been eaten. The supply side tends to get eaten on insecurity events.

good luck with your bets, mine is probably a bit like Rothchilds, I suspect.

the cold and windswept gnome.

Interesting to see the breath taking, macro-moves coming on in droves, especially the positioning of the "coalition of the willing" (and unable) in the Middle East, and in particular the attempt to "coral or coflict" with Iran. Tracking the arms sales to Saudia Arabia, Qatar, UAE is mind boggling, and of course somewhat opaque. Massive business for the USA and UK, with sales vastly more than us$100b in the last 5 years. Has peace got a chance? and what sort of business offering comes from peace? Trump seems to be taking a lead from the Rothschilds, in selling arms and fin services to both sides, and one suspects promoting division, dissension and conflict. Its a bit like Trumps trade and embargo wars. Why fight the war on one front, when you can fight over several fronts (and try to conceal your true intent in the dust of skirmishes). The only trouble with this as shown by Napoleon and few more recent generals it does not seem to work to your advantage in the longer term. I am expecting a lot of upheaval in the next few years (short term), goodness knows what will be negotiated, and I suspect Trump will not...and who knows what the longer term holds,, but I suspect the US will not be the power it once was, and there will be significantly less disciples of the US$.

best and good luck to all ...

the gnome

Thanks MrT

"American journalist comes up with the answer that the American & UK banks are run and regulated so much better than those in the EU which are a mess,"....reminded me of some statements of a few hundered years ago" The Pope released new results from the Spanish Inqusition that the Catholic religion was the fairest and most virtuous (LOL) in the world...etc.

Well, well. I am not sure where to begin. But as a general principle, those who write the rules know the rules the best, and you do tend to find they know how to exploit the rules (and regulations LOL)..the Big 4 accounting firms for instance took this to a new level, and hence we got the magnificent TREASURE ISLANDS and TRANSFER PRICING rubbish, which we are all very surprised about and trying to remedy!

Hence I do take the statement about the regulations of the American Banks a little lightly, and with a gigantic amount of scepticism. Frankly I regard the existence and benevolence of the Easter Bunny a lot more believable.

How the UK banks would find and perform in the new BREXIT world is a wonderful thing to contemplate. The City of London has invented a menagery of rules and regulations on a cold wind swept island to its (only) advantage for some centuries now, so there is some argument to persuade they might continue to form.

There is also an argument that Germans,having been beaten in every war, and now having had their most respected bank torpedoed by US and UK investment banking subversive cultural types, might plot a marvellous revenge. Stranger things have happned, just ask the Czar (before July 17, 1918)

we do live in interesting times? I do have a strange feeling that the UK might sink a bit beneath the waves in a BREXIT world....but the world will go on.

And most imprtantly Gold will still be around, when all the nonsense and economists have long passed. A good listen is below
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-wfYQYTw3do

best
the gnome

Well it used to be the old saying...nothing was safer than $ in the bank, but then that was a long time ago?
It was also said by some people in a more light hearted fashion as not to mention the war,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfl6Lu3xQW0
and now we can probably add not to mention the German Bank.

The eye watering derivative book of Euro 42.8 trillion dwarfes the EU GDP, a mere Euro14.6 Trillion, and the German GDP clocks in at a tiddling Euro 3.0 Trillion. But its not that bad of course, as Deutsche Bank can manage this and Indeed, and according to the International Swaps and Derivatives Association, the gross credit exposure of over-the-counter derivatives, ( a more accurate measure of counterparty credit risk) was just $2.3tn for the entire market at the end of 2018, a decline of 0.4 per cent from 2017...and so on but... Things have gone disasterously for shareholders (from $40 in 2010 to about $7 now, only 82% down, so perhaps not a lot of fait in Deutsche mngt?) , and now 18,000 people are about to lose their jobs, in our new era of near full underemployment. The blame is apparently that the German bank was brought down by a rampant (ambush?) change in culture to that of American and UK investment banking. Lost again ! (and how this delightful story is repeated around the world)

There has to be a point at which one wonders whether we should go back to the good old German banking and engineering culture, stop all of this "financialisation of everything" and simply pay our way.

I can still recall the glossies that all of this financial engineering is great, as financial institution managers will now be able to manage risk better! The only problem is that there is now no evidence of this, but rather the real effect seems to be that it is one of hte larger contributors to instability of a appallingly designed "system".

I have long lost (most or all) faith in modern day financial engineering to produce equitable sustainable outcomes. Rather it appears that the "Fin Engineering" has robbed society of some of the top talent, which could have been far better used in other more beneficial ways to society than creating financial messes and stresses.

So now we end up in the zero interest environment, or worse we pay the banks to keep our money, and have to contemplate taking on a whole new level of risk so we can manage our meager incomes better...and so the financial engineers can still afford their 6 luxury homes 4 sports cars 3 mistresses (etc) and a daily visit to the shrink... LOL

It is a strange world, and to me it looks like a good time to be anchored in gold. Money in the bank? Invest in Bank shares?

good luck all
the gnome
PS ..... does anyone know what the current set of KPI's for our beloved CEO are?

Indeed. I think that if the Egyptian Government wants to attract investors (which they should do and are continually speaking about), penalising a company which has taken the lead running and mamoth risks in opening investing in the country, and who has paid its dues, educated and employed local people etc, will go over like a lead baloon. It won't be a matter of investors listening to the government or reading the next version of the law, it will be a simple case of seeing how investors are treated. That will be the end of the story. The world is trending risk adverse, and governments are losing or lost credibility.

If one wants to see how not to behave close by, have a look at the disasterous handling of the Reko Diq Deposit in Pakistan, by the "government". Discovered (detected might be a better word) in 1978 by the Pakistan Geological Survey, the government is nearly 50 years down the track and there is no agreement as to how to develop the deposit, let alone who owns it, ill will all round, and now the military is in the front running as a contender to be a major beneficiary of any future mining (shades of Zimbabwe and the Marange Diamond debacle...https://www.globalwitness.org/en/press-releases/zimbabwes-vast-diamond-riches-exploited-secretive-political-and-military-elites-report-shows/)

"Barrick Gold and Antofagasta, whose joint venture Tethyan Copper Company (TCC) discovered vast mineral wealth in Reko Diq, say they had invested more than $220 million by the time the Baluchistan government, in 2011, unexpectedly refused to grant them the critical mining lease needed to keep operating.

Pakistan argued its move was legitimate because TCC’s feasibility study was incomplete and the country’s Supreme Court voided the deal in 2013. But in 2017 the World Bank’s International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID) ruled against Pakistan."
https://www.reuters.com/article/uk-pakistan-mine-military-insight/pakistan-military-eyes-key-role-developing-giant-copper-and-gold-mine-idUSKBN1QT03K

And so in the last 50 years ( 2 generations denied) we have seen Pakistan Govts of various flavours, go cap in hand to the IMF and World Bank for all manner of Aid, and in the last 30 years alone, they have gone to the "well" 13 times, for bail out after bail out.
https://www.brettonwoodsproject.org/2019/04/pakistan-requests-13th-imf-loan-amid-us-china-proxy-battle/

Does Egypt want to start to rival Pakistan (or Zimbabwe?) ... I doubt it. Another spring might only be a breath away if the government does not show that it can govern properly and create dignified employment, improve health, education etc.. Surely we have been there and learnt?

best

the gnome

Thanks Dasut,
Local knowledge of technical matters, networks of can do peolple, local knowledge of mining and met, etc is very much key.
(sorry about all my typos, but have an old keyboard)

cheers
the gnome

MrT
Yes, It does depend on who does and wirtes the analysis! One of the things to consider that has always surprised me, is the extremely small part of the orebody which is actually sampled by the drilling used in the FS. Its a wonder they actually ever get it right, especially for gold and platinum...! Very simple calculation for a 40*40m drill pattern...but please do your own calculation...bottom line is that drilling only samples approx 0.0024% of the total ore volume! So there is a lot hanging on interpolation functions, which can overshoot and undershoot.

diameter 0.0450 m
volume 1.5902 m2


strike 1,000.00 m
width 50.00 m
thickness 250.00 m
density 2.70 g/cc
Volume 12,500,000.00 m3
Mass 33,750,000.00 tonnes
Grade 2.00 gpt au
Tot Ounces 2,177,419.35 ounces of au

drill density 40.00 m
drill holes EW 7.25
drill holes NS 26.00

Nos of drill holes 188.50
Tot Volume of drill holes 299.76 m3

% volume drilled 0.00240% ( I am not wishing to say this is a highly accurate calculation, but this gives the order of the % of the volume of the ore sampled by drilling ....for a drill hole of diameter 45 mm)

Of course you cannot drill the entire orebody out, as that would be mining while drilling.

The other one to watch is how much of the drilling is done by RC versus Diamond drilling.

So most of the resource and reserve estimation, pre-miing is done by massive underampling, which is one reason why people are very wary of FS, and miuch prefer to wait and watch how the orebody appears when mining, and all of the gaps start to be filled in !

good luck to us all, and nice to see the SP moving in the right direction

the gnome.

https://www.cardinalresources.com.au/

Takeover Cardinal? They have enough gold resources in West Africa now, without woryying about paying a premium, for something they don't know anything about. Definitely wait for Cardinal to be in steady state production...and in the mean time pay any spare cash back to investors to compensate them for the trashing of the share price due to " communication and management issues" would be my view.

Those wishing to get some feel for the accuracy and performance of feasibility studies...read below and follow the links, but definitely don't get carried away in believing the predicted numbers int he feaisbiity studies. Its the actual numbers which carry the day.

A 2003 study (Managing technical risk for mine feasibility studies; McCarthy) allocated the following frequency with which different technical factors resulted in feasibility study failure:

Geology, resource and reserve estimation: 17%
Geo-technical analysis: 9%
Metallurgical test work, sampling, [mineralogy?]: 15%
Geo-hydrology: 4%
Mine design and scheduling: 32%
Mining equipment selection: 4%
Process plant design: 12%
Cost estimation: 7%

.... studies indicate that only about half of projects meet expectations – be that of cost and time to build the project or be that overall business outcome. With a rather fatalistic outlook ... concludes:
… we need to acknowledge the fact that feasibility studies, and their estimates, are flawed
documents by necessity. We should be prepared to test the economics of our projects at capital levels of say +20-25 per cent over the base estimate, including the contingency, and honestly ask our if the project can withstand this risk....

https://enthalpy.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/EnthalpyCorporateProforma1100-The-Use-and-Abuse-of-Feasibility-Studies.pdf
....good geology work gives a truly feasible project a 50% better chance of success, bad geology turns a perfectly sound project into 50/50 chance.

the gnome

Ok and the SP and dividend againt the money earned in the bank comparison, over the same time period. I must have missed this part of your analysis

best
the gnome