Good afternoon
finally - and unfortunately - markets are giving in to all this bad news! Trump and his "very good friend" Xi have started to fight it out....I am sure, that the Chinese are extremely p...ed off with the Americans, since they seemed to have found a compromise just a few weeks ago - and now Trump´s new tariffs...
Europe is not doing much better...governments in Spain, Italy, Germany and UK are no save bets , and probably, I have forgotten a few!
Anyway - European equities weak, bonds rather strong, metals roughly unchanged in the morning, but coming under pressure during the afternoon as well...and surprisingly, gold cannot recover from Friday´s sell-off.
Even more surprising is the fact, that the top-Australian names EVN, SBM, RRL, SAR and NST were again better today!! I have very little explanation for this...the only reason I could think of is, that some people are expecting a very weak Australian $. In any case, the outperformance vs North American counterparts has been massive, and is overdone.
Atlas Iron - Gina Rinehart makes a 4.2ct cash-bid for the iron ore miner....and the stock is subsequently trading at 4.4ct which is not that small anymore - market cap today is 410 Mill A$. I would say: Life is easy, when you get 400 mill$ or so in royalties each year!
S32 - and another corporate play: S32 is bidding nearly 2 bill Canb$ for the stock, which is planning to produce 95.000t zinc and 120.000t of lead p.a.. Potentially, S32 will up the planned production - in any case, they will spend some time to develope the best scenario for the asset. Production not before the end of 2020, more realistically some time in 2021 - but S32 have not given a time plan here except for saying, that it will take longer then current plans by Arizona Mining. The project appears to be excellent - IRR is very high at 48%, and NPV something around 2 bill$ at what appear to be realistic, potentially conservative metal prices below todays price levels.
Peak Resources - announced today, that they are making substantial progress with regards to their Special Mining lease in Tanzania. Following meetings with the Minister of Minerals as well as the Chairman of the Mining Commission, teh Minister said, that she had instructed to process the companies application for Special Mining Lease as quickly as possible, and that it would be weeks rather than month before a licence would be granted! This is certainly to most constructive news we have had from Tanzania in quite some time!!
Antipa Minerals - it had become a little quiet around the company - that is changing now, I hope. They have completed to raise 7.5 Mill$ , and there is real action in the area: RIO appears to have had some very exciting drilling success for copper, and apparently, has built a 40-person exploration camp in the relatively remote area, about 130 km Nort-North-West of the Telfer Mine. RIO have pegged 9.000 skm of ground in the area, and have a 60 mill$-JV with Antipa ( &0 Mill only, if RIO will go to 70% ). RIO will actively drill the JV ground, probably from August on, and Antipa is starting to drill on their ground next door this month! Some hot exploration news would be good news for the junior end in Australia. AZY have been cheap for some time...but it´s hard to generate interest at this end of the market, unless you report something really hot!
Have a nice evening
WS