Member Info for nero120

Sounds more to me like he's saying "Mark get lost so we can come in and suck all the wealth out of this rich vein for ourselves and screw the existing shareholders".

If I'm wrong then why doesn't he put a reasonable offer on the table that would reward all existing shareholders for the time and risk taken to develop la India?

Sod off, would rather Mark stay at the helm, he's earned shareholders trust the hard way. I wouldn't support him getting out of the way for someone else unless there was a damn good incentive.

All it took was the onset of WW3! Geez, you'd think gold would be flying through $2000 under these conditions, I guess algos don't really get "risk".

Nice tick up in gold and silver, fingers crossed 2020 is our year. Merry Christmas Condorians!

"On the up side, dilution would be minimised - that's clearly MC's priority, above all else. (Could this be one of the reasons why he (allegedly) doesn't get much respect from some of his peers? After all, this would move a lot faster if he diluted us to hell and back to raise the cash for either drilling or production...)"

EL, I have been pondering Beaty's comments about MC not being "the most well thought of guy in the world" over the past few days. In all my communications with him over the years I've had no reason to think less of him, if I did I doubt I'd still be invested here, in fact, MC is a large part of why I'm still invested here! He's always struck me as an honourable man, considered and meticulous. He always responds to my emails promptly and politely and I'm just a tiny shareholder here!

Why would Beaty make this comment, I thought... And exactly the point you make above kept resonating in my head! I imagined that MC's priority in avoiding undue dilution means guys like Beaty, Sprott, Rick Rule, etc who love to accumulate tons of cheap warrants might be only too frustrated when a CEO of a junior explorer says I want your money but I'm not going to do it at the detriment and expense of current share holders, especially when money in the sector is scarce! I can imagine he might upset people when he refuses to do what they think is reasonable if he wants their money.

Then again, I could be way off! I'd be keen to know what was behind Beaty's comment, at least from his perspective. At the end of the day though, MC has given me no reason not to trust him, both in words and deeds, and that's worth more to me than rumour and speculation.

Noel, no one can predict timing when it comes to cycles turning, all they can say is that there are fundamental reasons that a change will occur and at some point it will. Many of us made the mistake of buying this share at the end of the last bull market and holding it through this entire bear market, and guess what the share price went down! Not difficult to understand in hindsight, it's certainly taught me much about commodity cycles and I thank MC that he's gotten us through the bear market without suffering too much pain. Commentators in the world of finance are trying to call the cyclical shift and that's difficult, especially with central banks out there printing trillions determined to prevent the coming mega global recession for as long as possible.

Make no mistake, it's coming. The question is, when, and will Condor be ready and able to capitalise on the shift. That's the gamble, but if it pays off I think it will be life changing.

Noel, you say you were in gold stocks since 2002? Then you rode a secular bull market all the way to the top - and back down again. That's some ride, hopefully you took some profits from your monster gains. However it sounds like you are judging Condor on share price action alone, which is generally down since 2011 - the point when gold hit an all time high and then proceeded to fall almost 50%. Condor is not alone in this regard, most other gold equities (juniors esp) have followed this trend more or less.

The secular bear market in gold is now ending, so being that you have already been through one entire cycle, how can you be so sure there is "no chance" Condor would ever hit 90p? Based on cyclical forces alone this could easily hit that number with no change in the underlying fundamentals. The best case scenario - if Condor is producing 120k oz / year when the next bull market reaches it's peak, well in late 2012 it almost hit £2 (~£60m market cap) and the fundamentals have strengthened considerably in that time, who knows what the share price could go to.

But first of all the money needs to come back into the sector, that will likely happen over the next year or so as the gold price is steadily rising and large investors are starting to look at capitalising on future gains with exposure to the rising gold price, leveraged via gold equities. Not to mention when mainstream guys like Bill Gross are screaming "buy gold"!

Many predicted Condor would not survive the bear market, as per many other juniors. However, Mark has steered the ship shrewdly and survive it has, and thrived. Dilution has been kept to a minimum and the project has been massively derisked and the land package enlarged considerably, it is even possible a toll refinining agreement could generate the first cash flow for the company shortly.

Yet despite all of the things I've only briefly mentioned, the only thing you're thinking is "but the share price...". Ok then!

Care to provide a reason why you think there is "no chance"? Are you saying that an £85m market cap is unreasonable for Condor considering the assets it has?

Great interview!, thanks for positing goneawol.

Mark mentioned that Calibre also presented at PMS Zurich... is it a stretch to speculate that Mark met with the Calibre CEO Russell Ball jsut as he did a few months ago at Beaver Creek and Denver Gold Forum? I would be very surprised if they didn't meet to discuss toll refining.

He also said that Calibre have put on idle a 2000tpd ball mill. They therefore clearly have spare capacity to toll refine ore from Condor, just have to start up the ball mill again and Condor can truck them ore from La India pit and generate cash flow for both companies.

Also, Calibre announced the suspension of underground mining this week due to the subsidence of several properties, which will impact the production of high grade underground ore that is used to blend with the lower grade spent ore. Just adds to the incentive to get a toll refining deal done with Condor asap.

All very positive in my view, let's see what happens over the next few months.

Their market cap is currently just shy of CAD$130m, compared to when they closed on the TSX.V at CAD$26m...

Any time I have a question I email him and he responds promptly, like he does for any shareholder. I'm happy with the way the company is run and with my investment here, unlike yourself as you constantly feel the need to let everyone know, like anyone cares at all.

Haha you absolutely full of bs slim, I've never ever been to a roadshow or condor presentation, let alone met or spoken to MC!!! Are you a labour mp by any chance because you have about as much credibility as one!

Perhaps your problem is you invested knowing nothing about the company or the gold market, and now because you didn't get rich quick and don't have the balls to sell you're angry at everyone, especially MC. Well completely by accident you invested in a decent well run company that despite a prolonged bear market hasn't gone bust, and hilariously you don't even realise it!! One born every minute I suppose...

Totally agree Simms. Mark has always acted to avoid undue dilution, why would he all of a sudden chose to dilute current shareholders out of existence, especially when he and other major shareholders who aren't billionaires would also be diluted and lose all reward for years of hard work. Current calibre shareholders have been screwed, no two ways about it. I haven't researched it but I'd be interested to know how senior management were affected by the deal, I very much doubt they suffered the same dilution. I would be livid had I been holding there through the entire bear market only to have my shareholding reduced to nearly 10% of what it was!

Rothrock, I'm not sure why all of a sudden you're so bearish but in my opinion you have things wrong. Mark said in the presentation at the denver gold forum (BRILLIANT presentation, his best yet I think, hit all the key points and really sold Condor well) that we have £5m in the bank which should cover BFS and land purchases. We already have a great working relationship with the IFC, they are an obvious candidate for financing the mine - especially considering Condor have been fastidious in keeping to the IFC's performance standards and now that the IFC have sold all their equity holdings in order to concentrate on financing projects through debt.

Regarding the toll mining situation, we already know that B2Gold requested ore from La India and recorded metallurgy tests of 12.1g/t gold and 95.4% recovery, plus Mark inspected La Libertad earlier this year. I'm fairly certain an agreement was reached with B2Gold Nicaragua but was blocked by B2's head office, obviously due to the fact that negotiations were being finalised with Calibre to sell the mines to them. In *my* opinion, Mark's reason for meeting with Calibre's CFO at Beaver Creek and CEO at Denver Gold Forum was to discuss the toll mining agreement that was reached in principle with B2Gold Nicaragua, and I am fairly certain they will want to continue that agreement in for the same reason that B2 agreed to it.

Remember, there are no mineral reserves at La Libertad only resources, and the mine has 12 months ore remaining at the current production rate of 6,400tpd. The latest NI 43-101 on Calibre's website recommends 30,000m of drilling which will take 12 month at least to complete and then another 12 months minimum to get into a mine plan. Once that's all done they still have to get it permitted and that can take years as we know!! Calibre need to reduce the AISC on those mines and their presentation at Beaver Creek displayed huge reductions (50%+) by H2 2019. How exactly are they going to hit those targets given the above?! If it was that easy then why wouldn't B2 have already reduced their AISC significantly?

I see no reason why Calibre wouldn't want to agree a toll mining deal with Condor, and if the Calibre management are as top quality as everyone says then they will want it sorted asap as it is clearly in both parties interest.

Email from Mark this morning:

Dear All,

I met Calibre Mining’s CEO and CFO respectively at the Denver Gold Forum and Precious Metals Summit. They have done an excellent job in raising CAD 102M by way of a private placement in Calibre Mining shares. The deal to buy B2Gold’s mines was announced on 2nd July, with the placement taking much longer that expected to complete, over 11 weeks and only finalised this week. The gold price is +17% since the 2 July (slide 6) and this definitely helped raise the money. Calibre has a proven management team has an excellent reputation and created significant money for many investors with the sale of Newmarket Gold for CAD 1 Billion, they have been able to attract investors who have backed them before. The transaction is expected to be completed on 15 Oct with Calibre shares trading on 21 Oct. it is excellent news that this Group is investing US$100M in Nicaragua.

Calibre Mining had 42.8M shares in issue pre the transaction. 170M new shares issued in the Placement to raise CAD 102M + 88M shares issued to B2Gold as part of the purchase consideration and circa 18M shares to be issued when the US$10M convertible issued to B2Gold is converted. Total 276M new shares being issued or 6.45 times the current number of shares in issue or put another way, existing Calibre shareholders own 13.4% of Calibre post transaction

Regards from Nicaragua

Mark

Just in addition, I found this B2 report on La Libertad from March 2015:

https://www.miningdataonline.com/reports/LaLibertad_TechnicalReport_03272015.pdf

"The mining permit for Jabali Antenna is expected to be granted in the second quarter of 2015"... oops! Permits can be a tricky business as we all know.

Awax, I did glance through the calibre presentation. The part that stood out to me was that on page 11 they claim they can bring down El Limon's AISC from US$1567 to US$645... err, wow! That's a remarkable achievement, I wonder how they plan on doing that exactly, especially considering that in October last year, B2Gold conducted a life of mine study for El Limon concluding that it would cost $35m to extend El Limon’s life-of-mine to 21 years, bringing AISC down to US$900 per oz (excluding capital costs):

https://www.mining.com/b2gold-completes-expansion-study-el-limon-mine/

This study includes the El Limon central zone discovery (5.13m tonnes @ 4.92gpt = 812,000oz), so I'm not sure where Calibre are getting such optimistic figures from... Also, has the pit even been permitted? What about Jabali Antenna? I'm not up to date with these, but this article from April this year reckons "Production from the new Jabali Antenna pit is expected to start in the second half of 2019, subject to the successful completion of B2Gold’s resettlement activities and receipt of the Jabali Antenna openpit permit":

https://www.miningweekly.com/article/ajority-of-b2golds-mines-outperform-guidance-in-strong-first-quarter-2019-04-18

We all know how long the permitting process can take in Nic. Now I suppose it's possible that Calibre can achieve everything they are promising but it looks crazy optimistic to me. Naturally I wish them luck, and hope that Condor and Calibre can work together for mutual benefit and to benefit the people of Nicaragua.

Agreed EL, I was a little surprised that despite recently sounding bullish on condor, RR suddenly decides to dump half his shares, yet nothing has fundamentally changed during that time. My initial thought was that simply he bought in hoping for a re-rate based on a quick toll deal, and perhaps since that hasn't materialised as quickly as he liked it was time to move on. Fair enough.

Even if what RR says is true and Calibre plan to spend even more cash with a huge drill program, it will still be years of exploration and permitting before even a piece of that ore can be fed into El Limon or La Libertad, and until then those mines are losing money. The real question is, why wouldn't Calibre agree to a toll mining deal? If they think to acquire Condor in a distressed sale then surely that ship has sailed, Condor has access to financing that have kept it afloat throughout the entirety of this bear market when many other gold explorers have folded, and not only have Condor survived but have managed to expand and derisk the project significantly. It seems irrational that Calibre would be that malicious or foolish for no real benefit.

Whilst either of these mines have capacity, it seems mutually beneficial for Condor and Calibre to agree a toll mining deal. But regardless of that, progress on building the mine at La India will continue. MC might not be a big name in the gold community but he has serious players backing him, not least of which is the government of Nicaragua who want the mine built.

Absolutely brilliant news for Nicaragua and Condor! Hopefully it is the start of an easing of tension between the US gov and Ortega, who I bet was fairly pleased with the news himself... Troika of Tyranny really Bolton? Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

All that volume and the price didn't really move, very interesting. Doubt it was PIs, they only tend to buy when the price is moving. Someone building a position?

She's on the move!

*Very=bet