Roundtable Discussion; The Future of Mineral Sands. Watch the video here.
I would imagine their resources will be stretched just delivering what we know of for the next 12 months or so. Financially the committed projects will require CAPEX of some $80m to possibly $100m to deliver and the details of that funding needs to be finalised. Admittedly the expenditure will be spread over at least a couple of years. Pleased to see they have a full time CFO now, so hopefully we will see in the near future a proper CAPEX Statement. Can but hope? There is plenty of opportunities in both Zambia and South Africa so I would be surprised and a little concerned about overstretch if South America realistically came into view within the next couple of years.
Aprogerson, thanks for the additional info, but the concern I had was why had AISC gone up by an alarming $300 from Q2 when broadly there was the same level of production. M20ASH provided the answer. The consistency of the free cash amount per Ozs is somewhat reassuring but if costs were really getting out of control as it had first seemed to be, then relying on an escalating gold price to retain free cash margin would be a recipe for disaster. Will be interested in their plans to reduce costs going forwards.
I think you will find that to hit the lowest part of the production guidance 31K ozs in Q4 will be required which should be achievable.
Couldn't agree more Visitor. SLP and JLP in recent releases have indicated just how good the July to September quarter was for them in their PGM financials. Many will be surprised at how good Tharisa's annual figures will be, hinted at in the presentation. Maybe once the financials are released on 30 November the SP will begin to reflect the company's true value. Not quite as bullish as you appear to be though in assuming the current PGM basket price can be largely maintained over the next 12 months.
TBTT, yes excellent financials for the quarter at SLP. No surprise. They are blessed with a relatively high rhodium percentage in their basket so they would currently have a high gross basket price. They also exclude correctly any chrome revenue as that belongs to their sponsor mines, which of course flatters the revenue to EBITDA if you are comparing them with Tharisa or Jubilee.. Everything looks good in the short term at SLP with what is likely to be further excellent results in the current quarter and a good special dividend from the above broker forecasted rhodium and palladium prices. But the real test for me and maybe others looking say a couple of years ahead, is the new management's apparent lack of corporate development for the future. The loss of ROM ore from some of their sponsor mines is also a concern. Maybe these issues will be resolved when the management reports in January with the half year results. They will certainly have a large cash pot to invest. At the moment I look at Sylvania as a very good rhodium play only. The volatile rhodium price and the company being solely in South Africa makes them a risky play in my book and certainly not a longer term investment. This may be the reason for their share price being lower than what one would have thought it should be purely looking at their current financials.
ausnp, a good broker note by WH Ireland on 8 July indicated a fair value share price was 11.2p. For once I would suggest this is a broker note worth reading! and can be found on the Jubilee web site. Looks like the analyst had a lot of help from Jubilee as one would expect being one of the company's brokers, and they have not gone mad about future expectations. The bulls might well argue they have been over conservative.
Must admit I didn't expect to see the increase today. The current earnings level and potential copper earnings certainly warrant it but are some just speculating on the expected good annual results and hoping to bail out as soon as they are released?
Sumoskier, the expected profit of around £13m should be already in the SP, assuming no nasty impairment, as you seem to be indicating. From what we currently know I would have thought the next significant news to impact the SP would be the operations update in late January for H2 of calendar year 2020. If PGM basket price has been maintained at the current level it could well show earnings around £30m which would lead on to a HY2021 profit well in excess of £20m in late February/March. If it also confirms the copper cathode production is also steadily increasing through the local 3rd party miners and project Roan has also started to deliver concentrate to the refinery then even better.But I don't expect too much in the earnings for copper at this early stage. A more meaningful copper earnings contribution will not materialise until the end of H1 2021. Of course we could easily be caught out by an unexpected positive update on Tjate discussions which could really set things alight.
Troajan. Jubilee Metals is likely to have an offtake agreement with Galileo for the high grade zinc ore at Star Zinc. The ore would be processed at its Sable refinery in Kabwe. This arrangement is likely to commence in 2021 but nothing has been RNS yet and It does not have any other interest in the Star Zinc project.
Jubilee is a rapidly growing metals recovery business from both ROM ore and tailings. It now has a mature PGM business in South Africa, and a copper business in Zambia which will further transform the company over the next couple of years. The company is unrecognisable from the one that had an interest in Leigh Creek in 2017. They are really worth a look. Annual results up to end June should be out next week.
gotreal, Leon can be a little bullish in interviews! But what CEO isn't!? What he is probably thinking is there will be earnings coming through for copper for the first time , but how much will depend on how quick the ramp up of the local 3rd party supply occurs throughout the 4th quarter and whether figures for any production in the 3rd quarter are included rather than being capitalised. Remember the front end upgrade facility at Sable was not even commissioned until last week. It is quite possible there will also be an increase in the chrome production and earnings as the full impact of the revised contract and extra volume flows from Windsor and Windsor 8 in particular come through. Leon may also be aware of additional efficiencies coming through for the PGMs, producing more output. The original 2nd half of 2020 target was 6000 PGMs ozs per month whilst 5000 per month was achieved in the 3rd quarter. There may be some extra chrome from Inyoni as well. But above all his statement is assuming at a minimum the buoyant PGM prices for August and September are maintained through to the year end, and even then the large PGM sales adjustment that I believe was included in the earnings for Q3 will be far less in Q4. .
Interesting discussion on effectively the difference in the PGM operational earnings reported and what it might actually prove to be when the cash is received. I have similar estimates of the basket price as mogli. Totally agree Sylvania's explanation of what is actually going on in their quarterly reports is excellent and their chairman also provided an excellent explanation of the situation in his statement in their last annual report.
You might need a cold towel for what follows: The 3rd Q calendar year 2020 figures just released for Jubilee show £13.9m earnings with 15000 PGM ozs produced. My understanding is the earnings figures for each month are made up as follows: (the PGM ozs produced for that month multiplied by the PGM basket price at the end of that month)+(the number of PGM ozs produced in the month 3 months earlier multiplied by the difference in the basket price at the end of the current month to that 3 months earlier). So the 3rd quarter would have been the earnings calculated for each month's production within the 3rd quarter plus an adjustment for each month's production earnings calculated during the 2nd quarter. For example for the month of September the earnings for that month would have been the production during that month multiplied by the PGM price at the end of September plus a sales adjustment for the earning of the production during the month of June calculated originally on the price at the end of June. An adjustment is positive if the PGM price basket price is higher 3 months later but negative if it is lower. We were blessed with rapidly increasing PGM prices in the 3rd quarter particularly in August and September, so there was a large positive adjustment for the 3rd quarter. I estimated it to be £2.75m for Q3 which means the earnings for the 15000ozs was set at £11.15m . The £11.15m earnings is the best estimate of the cash Jubilee will receive during the 4th quarter for the 3rd quarter's PGM production. The cash actually received in the 3rd quarter would have been the amount calculated for the earnings for the months of the 2nd quarter plus the sales adjustment of £2.75m.
Https://www.miningweekly.com/article/platinum-sits-in-hydrogen-economys-sweet-spot-wpic-2020-10-20/rep_id:3650
Thanks to gsg on the other board for finding this very interesting interview. Makes one understand why there might be some interest in Tjate alluded to by Leon in the interview last week.
I have a way over weight holding of Jubilee shares in my portfolio. I keep having to hold myself back from investing more though as everything is looking very rosy if you take a 12 month to 24 month view on what we just know at the moment.We all know about the political risk of the two countries Jubilee operates in, but ignoring that, what is the biggest near term risks. Covid is an issue but I cannot see any long term shut downs if any at all. Even in the UK we are at last beginning to realise the insane economic damage we are inflicting on ourselves, something South Africa was very quick to realise.Technically I certainly believe Jubilee can overcome all of the technical and operational difficulties in putting in place quite a demanding project pipeline over the next 18 months or so, but the biggest risk for me is the large funding and in particular its reliance on the cash flow coming from the PGMs part of the business. I check the PGM commodity prices regularly, but all seems to be good here too with predictions the high palladium and especially rhodium prices will continue as there appears to be more demand than supply even during the COVID impacted economic down turn. Jubilee will also be increasing its PGM production at Inyoni both in the very short term once the new ROM feed and ultra fine chrome plant comes into play early next year, as well as after building the extension to the PGM processing plant late next year. Am i worrying about being hugely overweight in the portfolio unnecessarily, as I am convinced if all goes to plan, and the earnings figures start to emerge from the copper production build up in about 18 months time, this share will be at least double what it is today.
NorthernShark, you are correct. The tailings being used were those "inherited" when they bought the Sable refinery from Glencore. It looks to me as though Glencore put no value on these tailings as they did not think it was economically possible to convert the low copper grade into copper cathode. Very quietly Jubilee did just that utilising the technology and processes they developed for the ultra fine chrome plant to get at the copper fines. As a result they have been able to book an accounting profit on the purchase of the Sable refinery in excess of £2m, probably largely from the tailings. With the success of extracting the copper from the tailings economically at a rate of 100 tonnes per month of copper cathode, Jubilee has proof of concept, which has been a major factor in securing the two large copper tailings and ROM projects with more to come.
It appears that building the front end copper upgrade facility at Sable has taken a little longer than originally envisaged. This has meant the 3rd party ore/concentrate from local miners is probably only just starting to be processed at Sable. It was expected in the early part of Q3 building up to a target of 400 tonnes per month I believe. The delay though does not seem to have had any impact on bringing in phase 1 of Project Roan for late this year. I suspect that Jubilee will be capitalising all costs and revenue from copper until the end of the last quarter, so the first time any copper operational figures I expect to see released will be in the early part of the New Year 2021.
Yes Jubilee restarting the zinc circuit work is positive for Galileo.. But the project is not quite as small and simple as Colin has indicated. Not for the first time! Jubilee has not released an RNS yet but Leon Coetzer their CEO stated after the Mine Prophets on line presentation the following
" The US$ 11 million (budget) for the zinc circuit includes the recovery and precipitation circuit to produce a zinc salt plus a new tailings storage facility that ensures all effluent is captured and sealed unlike the past (Kabwe tailings)"
Best guess is the circuit will not be ready for processing Star zinc ore until mid 2021, which is in line with the fairly recent W H Ireland broker note It should also be realised this project is very much in 2nd place after the copper projects at Sable but hopefully timelines as indicated above will not slip further back.
In the Q&A of a webinar late this pm, Leon Coetzer the CEO of Jubilee Metals indicated the project to build the zinc processing unit at The Sable refinery had restarted as their engineers could now cross over borders after the COVID restrictions. No timeline for its completion was given though, but surely this is good news for the Star Zinc project.
A number of interesting points came out of the webinair in the Q&A with Leon.
1. Multiple parties showing an interest in Tjate
2. DCM upgraded tailings-news should be out by end of quarter
3. Inyoni PGM plant expansion-board has approved
4. The chrome target of 90000 tonnes per month should be available from end of this year(presumably when the Inyoni over the road plant is reopened and recapitalised and the Windsor 8 plant is fully up and running, which should be about now.
5. The work on the copper upgrading facility at Sable has completed and commissioning starts this weekend. So local 3rd party ROM uplift should start coming on stream very soon
6. The zinc processing unit work has now restarted as the engineers can crossover the border.
7. Existing copper projects involve a feed resource of around 170 million tonnes but aggresively chasing down additional projects involving 280m tonnes( did I hear that right).
8. No mention when rebuilt ultra fine chrome plant comes on stream, but when it does it will not only produce chrome concentrate but also be able to upgrade the feed into the PGM processing better than currently. The improved feed quality will enhance the PGM output. It looks like the ultra fine chrome facility might be the first step for all feed into the platinum processing part of the Inyoni operation and could produce a step up in efficiencies and perhaps bring the 6000 oz of PGMs per month target into sight early next year. .
Just listened to Leon on tonight's webinair. Very impressive. the phenomenal growth most of us are aware of came out clearly, but the interesting part was the comparison with an equivalent size mining company. Leon was arguing Jubilee now has clear sustainable earnings with a huge growth in earnings through copper also on a sustainable basis. Jubilee should should be valued at least the equivalent of a medium to large size mining company and it has far less operational risk as no part of the resource is underground. Jubilee is already a large chrome concentrate producer doubling its output from the beginning of next year, a medium size PGM producer with more growth to come as it looks like the Board has agreed to the Inyoni expansion, and it will be a medium size copper producer once the two large projects come on board with the hint of more Zambian copper projects of a size greater than the resources of Roan and Elephant. Keep banging the drum Leon.