Cobus Loots, CEO of Pan African Resources, on delivering sector-leading returns for shareholders. Watch the video here.
It's difficult to say if we are at the beginning of the end of the sales process. Mark flying out to Nic again doesn't mean much, given as said below the negotiations are mainly going to be dictated by Jim.
By the end of this, most of the SPs will make superb detectives, given how much speculation we've been doing!
Agree with Nero it's very difficult to discern if we are at the start of a new commodity super cycle.
One thing I'd say about negotiations is that the ultimate bargaining chip is to be able to walk away from the table.
Condor can't do that, they've basically said we have no plans to build a mine / Plan B. I think that would be the ultimate leverage, not the rally in the price of gold.
3 site visits in 18 months, though, hardly battering the door down. 1 of the companies in advanced talks has walked.
Mellon may be prepared to keep funding the company in his belief gold will continue to appreciate. It's his money, but it is a gamble.
There is a wider question which is: is Mellon in contact with reality in terms of valuation? Maybe a lot of companies have looked at the minimum asking price and thought not in a million years.
He isn't dealing with old Russian peasants here, selling their life savings via coupons, but professional companies who aren't going to pay over the odds.
After giving it some thought I think the RNS implies that nothing is really going on. Who knows maybe even the Frisby article was an orchestrated pump.
Calibre may be the bidder that has walked away. As others have said, there is no meaningful plan B.
And it's not guaranteed that the gold price will continue to climb.
I'm in profit as I got in around the 15p price but I may as well sell up as I don't think anything is happening here. I hope I'm wrong.
Yeah I agree with some of the posts below. With this share, you aren't just investing in leveraged silver (volatile to say the least), but also the macro-economics of Mexico and its currency issues.
In other words, this share is not for the faint of heart!
There could be a number of reasons they've held back on the annual results. Have they ever done it before?
But combined with the fact they are pretty much blocking off communications (e.g. can't speak to Dominic Frisby), it is suggestive something may (finally) happen this month.
Price of gold means it is a better environment for gold miners but I think it too early to call a bull market yet. Inflation, geopolitics (threat of nationalisation), the fact all the easy to reach gold is out of the ground, all these things will weigh on gold miners going forward. Gold streaming companies seem to be a safer bet.
My guess is there will be more M & A activity and hopefully Condor will be part of that, but one of the reasons for the delay is that any acquirer will be doing a lot more due diligence than say 15 years ago. I also think it probably a deal will be announced this month.
Jim is a promoter himself really, that's partly what master investor is about, it allows him to big up his companies.
In fairness, gold juniors have always been very risky, with lots of issues along the way; so it is a well known strategy in the sector to paper over the bad, try to keep the investment coming in, as they are all generally loss making.
The same went for the big gold miners in the last supercycle, they were wasting money left right and centre. This is one of the main reasons gold miners in general remain in the dirt, investors don't trust them.
My opinion is that a lot of people got into gold miners via condor via master investor / Jim's rubber stamp of approval. I do have an issue with them spending money on the mill and then about turning and deciding not to produce. Everything else I consider to be fairly normal for a junior miner. But the company has to do an update soon.
Agree that there needs to be a proper update at some point. Frisby's article will only drum up interest for so long.
I note there are no upcoming Events on the Condor website so I'm assuming Mark won't need new presentation material in the meantime. It's a puzzle I tell ya.
I suspect they would have agreed a price of gold on which to do the valuation. Not 3k that's for sure. Maybe 2k, perhaps slightly less.
Then like anything it comes down to drumming up a bidding war between 2 maybe 3 buyers to get a higher valuation. Condor unfortunately say, well if you don't pay what we want, we will start mining ourselves, as it would clearly be a bluff.
Looks like the major gold miners (Glencore etc) are getting ready for some M & A bidding wars.
Might inject some much needed life into the sector.
Dominic Frisby has been banging the gold drum for a long time. My take is that the price of gold will probably consolidate around 2200 but the miners will start to close the value gap; and silver will catch up this year.
Silver was the key form of money in the development of the global trading system in the early modern period.
I still think it is a form of money, as well as an industrial metal, but gold is the key form of money in terms of PMs.
It should catch up with the gold price ratio over time; silver based miners would be a very leveraged play that's for sure.
I made a ten bagger no less from Mellon's Polo Resources back in the day (hence my username).
The shareholders that time were nicely rewarded with a big jump in share price and dividend when the copmany was sold.
Make of that what you will but in my experience it's not this board's strategy to deliberately screw over shareholders.