Good afternoon
business confidence in Germany the strongest in 20 years or so....Durable Goods orders in the States much weaker than expected, sending the US$ down somewhat.
Gold saw selling of 1.8 mill oz within 60 seconds at excatly 10 am European time today...some say it was a fat finger, some think it´s manipulation...whatever it was, somebody sold a lot of gold in a very short space of time, sending gold down to 1235 US$/oz. It has subsequently recovered and is now trading at around 1240 US$.
Metals are having another positive day today - despite the lacklustre US-numbers.
Paringa - have now let a fixed price ECP contract for more parts of their new coal mine Poplar Grove.All major contracts have now been fixed...indications are, that numbers from the feasibility study will be a undercut by a few percentage points. Production start remains July 2018. The project is now dramatically derisked - but the negative is, that we might be in for a boring time now. One big story remains open, potentially: More off-take contracts with power stations. I would hope for some more before Quarter end Sept 2017. The stock remains very cheap, even though gas price below 3$ are not helping thermal coal prices in the States.
Kasbah - the aspiring tin producer has announced an unsual capital raising 1:2 at 1.5ct. It had an institutional component, and the larger players could decide, whether tehy wanted take up their rights, do nothing, or sell their existing holding at the same price! The IDC, investment arm of the World Bank, did the sale-alternative! )8 mill shares were sold, the largest buyer being Acorn, one of Australia´s best small cap funds. Tin is looking very interesting - semiconductors esepcially are doing well, and KAS`s project is looking quite good at today´s prices of just under 200.000 US$/t. Retail investors have some time to decide on taking up the rights.
Breaker Resources - have done anotehr round of aircore drilling, which was designed to test more strike length of their discovery. The drilling was very wide spaced, only down to 20m . Importantly, teh same formations and rock types as within the existing resource has been found, indicatina high chance for adding another 2km strike length to the current 6km. Deeper and more closely spaced drilling is now to follow. Tom Sanders continues to do the right thing!
Oceana - had a succesfull AGM today - 99% of shareholders approved salaries, which is unusual these days! Their brand-new mine Haile is having some smaller issues, hence it will take a littler longer for it to perform as planned. All issues are well defined, and should be rectified by August. The company has therefore reduced guidance by roughly 20%. Didipio is doimg unusally well on the other hand, resulting in overall unchanged production- and cost guidance of 550-600.000 oz at 600-650 AISC plus 18-19.000t of copper. Exploration is doing very well at Waihi in NZ, where resources are growing despite production, Didipio and Haile. Oceana is really a very well-run company, and is one of the most profitable gold miners around. The small debt-position should be eliminated in the enxt 6 month - especially, as Haile is cash-psoitive despite the small problems.
Have a nice evening
WS