Member Info for okenia

As you'd expect, the whole area is a compromise with some areas for exploration and mining, some for FN, and so on - balancing a mixture of stakeholder needs. Plenty of space for exploration and mining.

So if you go here: http://www.emr.gov.yk.ca/mining/pdf/mineral-potential-april-2016-web.pdf you can see the First Nation lands as diagonal hatched areas. The Class 1-4 story is here: http://www.emr.gov.yk.ca/mining/mining_land_use.html So yes there are some restrictions based on FN lands in the area but there's also loads of free areas to be able to drill holes in without having to gain FN permission

The First Nations have some areas assigned in the region but its not al of it. They're called "Classfication 1 Areas" where you need permission from the FN to do exploration work. There's plenty of ground that isn't Class 1 if you look on the Yukon mining recorder maps - so you just avoid those areas for exploration. I think the hair comment refers more to the actual running of Minto as a mine, the investment in expansion, and the lack of capital deployed to do local exploration. It's the poor relative and Capstone have prioritised their capital expenditure and best people on the other assets, leaving Minto to limp on. That is the hair AFAIK. Plenty to get their teeth into by the sounds of it - a bit like dropping a turnaround management consultant team into a struggling business. And that's where you generate value uplift and thus SP uplift. I hope!

Other pre-production assets in the region: Have a look at the image map on this page (there's a click-out to a PDF), it shows the various assets in that general area. http://www.triumphgoldcorp.com/projects/freegold-mountain/freegold-mountain/

Good interview, worth a few mins to watch. Some interesting nuggets. They're targeting "end of April" for restoration of trading although I think that's very ambitious given the known timeline UKLA put in place, plus the need to get funding finalised and the need to do a GM. Nice if it works but I'm still pencilling in June for that. Happy to be surprised on the upside. The equity raise is just part of a bigger funding package with other streams (debt, off-take pre-payment etc mentioned) and they are getting incoming calls offering funding. Sounds encouraging. Let's see. Intriguing comment about the Rolls Royce being the mill not the mine (well that's the capex, the rest is - literally - just a hole in the ground) and the aim being to keep feeding it. I know there's still 80% of the M&I Resource not yet in Reserve, so some definition drilling could address that, plus some new exploration in the area (it's called the Carmacks Copper Belt for good reason), and they also spoke about acquiring other assets. I wonder if that refers to other assets locally that could be trucked to Minto as opposed to setting up as a separate mine? Wasn't clear from the interview. Minto being the only producing asset in the entire Yukon so that mill really is the big selling point - literally no-one else has one in action. I suspect we'll get more layers of the plan revealed as the year progresses, but the body language in the interview came across as very positive.

I was loading up at 0.4p just over a year ago and now more than 100% up. Some people understand the market and how to make money, others sit on the side nursing losses and failing to understand what happened to them - let alone acknowledge their own responsibility for those losses. It does take a while to get the hang of AIM if you're moving to it for the first time, but you either learn how it works and exploit that, or you end up being eaten. Someone has to be bottom of the food chain, after all. Whinging when you've lost doesn't help, sadly - learn, change your behaviour, and start making money. The only personal responsible for your own trading wins and losses is you.

I suspect PERE will have to be a little bit careful how enthusiastic they are in public about this asset until it's all done and dusted and they own it, just in case Capstone have a change of heart and want to negotiate. You always should be a reluctant "oh you're killing me!" buyer in any negotiation. I thus expect it'll be a gradual process whereby we start to realise the real potential of this (a combination of work over and exploration). At the moment we have partly to trust the good judgement of PB and the board, and I would say that PB in particular is real mining royalty and knows his stuff. That won't stop me drilling down (lol) into the asset at the moment, but I'm not expecting to get the full picture right from the outset.

No worries

Copper is a no-brainer metal from a macro viewpoint. No other metal has the electrical conductive properties of copper. And unless the world is going to go backwards in installing aircon units and the raft of other electricity-consuming devices we all have these days, it's really only one way forward for copper. But since the price of copper has been so low for years, there's been no investment in new mines, and we're now at a crunch point on the supply side. Rick Rule, Robert Friedland, Tony Manini all wax lyrical about copper and are major bulls. It's an outstanding and solid metal to be in from the macro perspective (even if it lacks the gosh-wow of graphene nano tech lithium whatever!)

DavBr0 - looking at the other operations, Minto is the only Canadian asset in Capstone's p/f. They have a development play in S America, and two producing mines (Pinto and Cozamin) in Mexico and Arizona. The latter two are bigger than Minto and have lower costs, so have quite rightly been the focus of attention of Capstone. That in turn means that Minto has suffered from being the ugly duckling, it's been starved of finance, the best people have been moved to the core assets, and they've just done enough additional drilling to let it limp on from year to year. [It has only 20% of the M&I resource currently converted to Reserve ore, looks like Capstone basically drill enough to give it a few years at a time). This 'just in time' style of drilling is what you'd do if you owned a mine and didn't need to raise finance for it - you've got it, so why drill out more than you need at any time? Whereas if of course this was a new asset and they were looking to raise the capex for a new plant, they'd have had to drill it out more. That's one reason the '4 year mine life' bit is misleading, when you're in this sort of situation you just do it as you go along, so there's never a point when you appear to have a long LOM. I think that covers both of your questions in one - Minto is the smallest and highest cost of Capstone's assets and they've exacerbated the problem by not investing in it (as it's the smallest and highest cost ... you get my point).

steve - of you look at the RNSes you'll see the name of Pembridge's broker. If you're interested in taking part in any fundraise, first step is give SI Capital a call and become a client. That way you may get access. (If you don't then for sure you won't!)

Excellent article and interview with PB on Northern Miner. Gives a lot of 'colour' as to why Capstone wanted to sell and PERE wanted to buy. Seems they've been doing DD on this for best part of a year! http://www.northernminer.com/news/pembridge-aims-breathe-new-life-yukons-minto/1003794183/ Also starts to give a flavour of some of the specific steps they could do to improve the mine and make a value uplift. Well worth a read. There's supposed to be an interview on their podcast coming up soon, but it's not been released on my pod catcher feed yet.

MrM you really don't understand the genesis of these things I'm afraid. The company offered the CLNs, they weren't demanded by investors because they were "far from confident". If RRR had offered an equity placing, maybe we'd have taken it up - we don't know, do we? No we don't. You also have to appreciate that the call went round to existing supporters of RRR, most/all of whom had existing positions that the CLNs added to. Plus you're also guessing that people haven't been adding to their positions. On the basis of zero data. Other than that, you're spot on as usual. Can we talk equal access buy-backs again?

MrM a) By the same logic why should you pay more than the 0.4p placing from a year or so ago? b) When the CLNs were issued there was no guarantee of the Steelmin deal completing successfully, as you banged on about on a regular and annoying basis like a stuck needle. Now that deal has completed and RRR has 22% of Steelmin as a free carry the situation is completely different. I believe the technical term is "de-risking" Those of us who took out CLNs took on a big risk at 0.8p. People buying in now have a re-risked project and thus pay more. That really is investing principles 101.

Another good example is GGP which went absolutely ballistic despite - or, I would suggest, BECAUSE OF - a chunk of warrants. The MMs seem to absolutely love stocks with a good story and warrants because they have more options to play with liquidity and move the market around (they make their money from the spread after all). For example in GGP there were people effectively selling their warrants to the MMs and that gave them enormous firepower to feel comfy to move the SP around. I bought most of my GGP stock at sub 0.2p and it spent quite a while at 1.8-2.2p. There was amazing liquidity on GGP and that in itself attracted a herd of momentum/liquidity traders. It may seem slightly counter-intuitive but once you realise you make money by trading on the secondary market and NIT by trying to actually run the underlying company, it starts to become clearer. You make money by understanding the behaviour of other players on the 2nd market - other investors and, of course, the MMs. So the thing to look out for are shares where there can be a liquidity spike, e.g. associated with warrants. In the current market climate those seem to be the ones that go POP. (oh and another I had to add to that list is LION, which again did spectacularly well coincident with a wall of warrants being exercised - and I would argue those warrants were a positive contribution not a drag(. GGP, THR, LION - all three saw big surges alongside warrant exercise. Go figure. If we get to (say) 1.4p or above and start to see the 0.8p warrants being exercised then that will make the MMs wake up, the momentum / volume traders pay attention, and it'll be game-on.

panda - those CLNs don't have a clause where the company can repay early (or without the holder's consent) although I suppose the company could choose to make holders "an offer they couldn't refuse" if it so wished. Their redemption date is mid-Dec 2018.

If you mean the YA loan, yes. Rrr has walked away with 22% of Steelmin plus some cash. It was a high risk move but it's played out in the company's favour (And to be fair, YA have made money and Steelmin have progressed their asset, so everyone has won)

The last PERE fundraise was offered to retail investors via the Teathers app, so no reason not to do the same again. It's a similar (but IMHO better) offering to PB.

Minto is 75k NW of Carmacks, on what is called the "Carmacks Copper Belt" apparently. That sounds rather encouraging but I have no idea as to the scale of exploration that has been done in the wider area to date. Once you've got a mine with all the infrastructure in place it's a no-brainer to try and find satellite deposits that could be shipped into that central mine complex (zero capex, immediate extension of life). I need to get a feel for the wider geology of the area and work that's been done in the past.

Bythesea - the original strategy was indeed to get a small p/f of assets, each with enough of a stake to be in control. There was a list of (anonymous) assets and their scale circulated as part of the fundraise roadshow. Many were quite modest in size so yea you'd want a few. DL did make a throw-away comment that at least one of the assets they were looking at was so large that it would be all they needed (at least initially). I think that's what has happened here - they've hit the jackpot and bagged the big one. That's going to keep them busy. Remember, Minto is a MASSIVE mine. It's production is of the scale of KAZ, CAML etc. It's a company-maker in itself. That probably explains the dropping of the SPAV description on the website. At this time they don't need to make additional acquisitions, the near term focus will be on Minto and making that a cash cow. I do agree (a la Quadra) that if successful they'll most likely seek to expand with additional mines in the future, but the task now is to prove they can deliver with Minto. I'm still gobsmacked at the scale of their ambition. For a �3m shell to RTO a 16ktpa Cu producer is just an utterly amazing feat. Next task is to execute the deal and relist, and critically to deliver value during the deal for us long-term holders who have supported and backed the company to date with risk capital.