Member Info for Sher-Lock

The market maker goes short the sold position of 23'869 shares and covered his short with a cheap buy and made a gain of £167. Market makers don't take anything on their own books in this stock, therefore they try to sell high (today offer at 13p) and buy the sold shares cheap (today bid at 11.5p). From the differential, they make a risk-free living!

Even if a positive outcome will take place, the partners venturing in for money, PAT share of the project will decline faster than shareholder would like to see. With a market cap of five million Pounds, any exploration work will cost several million and will take place over several years before any project economic assessment can take place. Over this time nothing will have changed in India and before the mentioned work can take place - PAT is still busy in Indian courts. It is a bit like the Brexit - you never know when it comes or if it comes or nothing at all!

Perhaps it was missed, 28th October, the mother company of Fresnillo reported 3rd quarter financial results. A few points to highlight:
-Net sales were up by 5.3 per cent or 55.5 million US$ - of which 46.1 million US$ due to higher gold and silver prices, offset by the reduction in prices of base metals
-Inventory changes had a positive effect on the quarterly income of plus 64.7 million US$ - the effect of changes in gold inventories in Herradura leaching patios
-Production costs were 83 million US$ higher, depreciation, amortization and depletion +20.2 per cent or 29.3 million US$, contractors +22.7 per cent or 21.9 million US$ from the development of mining and civil works
These were the two main positions related to the gold and silver operations, but not all those costs are fully accountable to Fresnillo
PENOLES shares traded up by 4 per cent yesterday - market reacted positively to the results. As Fresnillo's silver and gold mining operations are only about half of PENOLES overall revenues and industrial metals were a bit weaker in Q3, there are clear signs that higher gold and silver prices are felt at the bottom line.
I would suggest even with the slight production miss in Q3 of FRES, that the financials are much better than analysts are betting for. Up to you for comments!

I was correct that they will struggle in Indian courts and it is just a repeat of more than a decade journey with this Company. Even if they will get the law on their side at one day - they lost more than a decade in exploration work. The budget to explore the properties will be in the millions GBP and not a few 100,000. Therefore any shareholder should be aware of a potential dilution. The share Price cut pop up to 15 or more Pence, but the opposite is possible as well. A former subsidary of Panthera just went into liquidation - Aforo Resources. They spun out this entity a few years ago with some exploration assets in West Africa. No success to raise more money to support management - hmm, the same people on PATH's board. Here you have one story I call the Indian Dream, and the other one where the Dream is over.

And the first thing they do is filling their own pockets - Forget any changes in India politics

Rajasthan government issues notification to increase allowances of ministers

The government of Rajasthan has issued a notification as per amendments to an Act passed by the state assembly which will increase the allowances of ministers. Residence allowance has been increased from Rs 10,000 to Rs 30,000 per month.

Strongest quarter of production since Ascendant aquired the El Mochito mine.
Q-Q/Y-Y zinc production flat at 16,369 lbs, lead +27/+36% and especially silver +5/+75%
Concerning the silver stream with Maverix Metals, ASND has to deliver 22.5% of the silver production during the life of mine
Ore porcessing was up slightly +4% which at the end should help the bottom line as costs should have risen much less than production - we will see more Details mid-November when the financials will be reported

A week ago, Ascendant reported ist metal production for the 3rd quarter:
Third Quarter 2019 Highlights:
-• Contained metal production up 21% to 28.8 million ZnEq1
lbs versus Q3 2018
- Average grade up 17% to 7.8% ZnEq versus Q3 2018
-Milled throughput up 4% to 200k tonnes versus Q3 2018

Contained metal production for the third quarter (“Q3 2019”) was 28.8 million pounds of zinc equivalent (“ZnEq”) metal,
comprised of 16.4 million pounds of zinc, 7.5 million pounds of lead and 366 thousand ounces of silver. Total contained metal production increased by 21% over Q3 2018 (23.9 Mlbs ZnEq) and 17% over Q2 2019 (24.6 Mlbs ZnEq), due to higher zinc and lead production and a substantial increase in silver grade.

In my calculation, we arrived at 432'000 ounces of gold equivalent, just a bit shy of the 439'000 some analysts were expecting. We should not forget, three months are a short time frame to improve any issues. On a longer-term view they will manage to improve operations and as mentioned, the 4th quarter should show first results of implemented changes. The macro-environment for precious metals can't be better and with higher prices, since July we should see some positive results in the bottom line. Take time and when the shares have recovered above 10 GBP - analysts will restart to recommend the shares.

Global zinc mine production posted a modest increase in August, rising 3.2% y/y to 1,099kt (12,940ktpa), latest data from the ILZSG shows. Once again, Chinese mine supply increases underpinned the global increase, up 2.9% y/y to 359kt (4,227ktpa), while strong gains in Australian mine output which increased 22.7% y/y to 122.2kt (1,439ktpa) also contributed to mine supply growth. Refined zinc output increased 4.9% y/y in August to 1,126kt (13,258ktpa), driven by 10.1% y/y increase in Chinese supply which totalled 493.7kt (5,813ktpa). Meanwhile, zinc metal usage increased 2.4% y/y to 1,146kt (13,493ktpa) with usage in China rising 6.9% y/y in August to 551.9kt (6,498ktpa). Global lead mine supply posted a modest y/y increase in August, rising 1.1% to 351kt (4,133ktpa) while refined metal output fell 1.5% y/y to 970kt (11,421ktpa) and metal usage increased 3.1% y/y to 1,002kt (11,798ktpa), pushing the Jan-Aug balance deeper into deficit at -48kt compared to -11kt for the same period in 2018.

The typical behaviour of an analyst - first pushing the story without getting the result out - top mining pick and then find all ways to talk down the story - even with a great asset base and all the known issues. Fresnillo is and will be the leader in silver and like many other mining companies, having its digestion problems when reaching a specific size. The target was lowered from 770 GBP to 660 GBP, and they recommend to buy Polymetal instead - we see certain risks in Mexico. What about the CIS risk, including geopolitics? I have nothing against owning a mine in the CIS, but talking down the risk (which is more political than anything else), just to push a name and talk up the risk of Mexico - I'm not sure if this will work. FRES and Mexico still better sleep than POLY and CIS.

SMM has released its latest survey of Chinese metal output for September. Notably, zinc production rose 15.4% y/y to 6.3mtpa, continuing the strong gains on the back of healthy smelter economics.

Vedanta has shuttered its Skorpion zinc operations in Namibia until February 2020 due to technical issues resulting in reduced ore production. The fully integrated mine and smelter, which produced 86kt of metal last year and was forecast to produce 90kt this year, will be offline until February 2020.

500'000 USD = 1.17 Pence per MAFL share
Why dividend? Would prefer new investments, or buyback!

Ind Penoles recovered entirely from the slump end July/beginning August and FRES still lagging - should trade up in a similar way and it would equal to 8 GBP without anything. Investors relation doing not the best job in communications, but as majority shareholder what cares! Ind Penoles just placed two new bonds 550 million USD 5.65% maturing in 2049 and 550 million USD 4.15% maturing 2029 - pretty cheap money & long maturities. It would cost them 1.3 billion GBP to take Fresnillo entirely private!

Management still burns money, what they did best forever, without delivering anything. Courts in India do what they want and regional courts don't care any rulings from the high court. The entire Indian economy on the verge of collapse as everything Modi's out. It doesn't matter who is ruling this country - it is getting nowhere. Even if PAT gets a ruling in its favour, it will take first a few million GBP to start with real drilling work on the properties. First gold not before 15 years and the geology is not the easiest one to extract gold. The recent RIM financing was an emergency deal, otherwise, they can't pay the running costs. It is a never-ending story, but nice for them who believe - similar to India itself, enchanting people and investors in a similar way. There are better stories out in the exploration/mining sector - doing business in India is nice for local people, but foreigners have to fight hard to be accepted and it cost a lot of money.

Excellent details about the LS project:

https://s21.q4cdn.com/765868678/files/doc_presentations/2019/10/Ascendant-Technical-Presentation_FINAL.pdf

ASND presentation, September 26th, LS from page 40 on - interesting to see already the mining plans on page 67

Comparing the share price of Fresnillo with its major shareholder Ind. Penoles, we arrive on a 25% underperformance since mid-August. The share price of Penoles recovered entirely from the last earnings wash-out, not so FRES. For sure, there were a few brokers pushing FRES as the only big precious metals stock in the FTSE 100 index, after Randgold merged with Barrick. With the negative earnings revisions, the stock lost its top ranking status and over the last few weeks, most brokers eliminated the stock from their recommendation buy-lists. Three months ago Penoles/FRES were trading at 241.08 MXN/8.64 GBP, hitting a multi-year low at 172.66 MXN/6.01 GBP beginning August. Yesterday Penoles closed at 256.49 MXN and FRES at 6.74 GBP. This is a reasonable gap which still exists in favour of FRES - and on top, earnings revisions turned positive over the last four weeks. Last month they toured with analysts on their mine sites and they are working to solve the issues (lower grade etc.). They will solve it and reach the previous targets 12 months later, who cares at the end. When the share price trades at double digits - the herd will jump on the story and analysts will upgrade the stock again - leaving the first 3 GBP of gains to the hard believers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n_M906UfO6k

The Shares of ist controloing shareholder Industrias Penoles moved up another 2.8% and closed at 247.66 MXN, the shares are back to the mid-June share price level. That equals to 8.12 GBP in Fresnillo, just on a comparable performance. Silver on the other side was trading mid-June at 14.95 USD, now 18.46 USD, but more important, since the end of June (15.32 USD) the move in silver will impact the bottom line of Fresnillo. It would be nice to see more Insider buying and I don't know what is the reason of management to hold off to buy a few cheap shares here.

The previous company of PAT, Indo Gold, started the projects in 2004 and was more or less busy in Indian courts. All the money they raised over the years went up in nothing. PAT burned 1.5 million USD, and they did not drill one hole. All the data of possible 6 million ounces is old news, and no-one talks about the difficult extraction. They will spend the recently raised money for management and lawyers, still having not drilled an exploration hole. They will need to raise at least two million GBP to start a first drill campaign, but first, they have to get the right to move on the property. Similar no goes with the investment in Treliver Minerals (former Anglo Saxony Mining) - nothing went off there for years and the spin-out Aforo Resources who had some exploration assets in West Africa - the last one was running out of money as they got no shareholder support. Great stories if one has a lot of time and deep pockets to survive with other investments. India is good for local people to do investments, but foreign companies face many different issues. Good luck to those believing in the Indian princess

Zinc prices are too low, and the smelters manipulate them. There are record low inventories in London and Shanghai; global mining output is up as well as consumption. Copper is a commodity for gamblers, like oil. In those future markets, most speculators are taking their chance to play any tweet by Trump. ASND is similar to TV (Trevali), and we trade in the last one even below the levels of the financial crisis, despite having good new management in place. No-one could tell me on which commodity in the metal manufacturing industry you could link zinc, i.e. consumption of nickel or ferrochrome is up = strong zinc demand. We will see, but if ASND and TV are facing profit margin squeezes, for the others is no difference.