red rock resources, page-7

February 24, 2009

Standing Room Only At The 57th Minesite Forum: With Gold Pushing The Thousand Dollar Mark, There Was Certainly Plenty Of Optimism Around


By Alastair Ford



They came, they saw, and some of them stood around. That’s right, as the bell went for lessons it was standing room only in the new venue for our Minesite forums, Armourers’ Hall in Coleman Street, right in the heart of the old City. Not that the new venue is any smaller than the old one, it’s just that our forums continue to generate a great deal of interest across the board from investors, analysts, and other interested industry parties. This time round we were perhaps helped along on our way with a slight weighting towards gold, as three of our presenting companies, ATW Gold, Cluff Gold, and Vatukoula Gold Mines, are purely focused on gold, while a fourth, Andrew Cranswick’s African Consolidated Resources has close on a million ounces of gold under its belt, as well plenty of platinum, nickel, phosphate and diamonds. And even if they weren’t quite able to slipstream in the updraft from near US$1,000 gold, the world is nonetheless looking kindly upon the other two companies we heard from this time round. In the case of Andrew Bell’s Red Rock Resources the company has gone into partnership with a giant of the mining investment world, Brian Gilbertson’s Pallinghurst. And in the case of Terry Ward’s Uranex, the government in Western Australia has just lifted a ban on the mining of uranium, leading to some serious interest in Uranex’s shares, even if the uranium spot price has flat-lined lately.
One key theme, as ever these days, was cash. At the end of a concise summary of a varied and diverse range of projects and plans, our first presenter, Andrew Bell, had to field a question from the floor which asked whether Red Rock Resources has any plans to move to a cash generative position. His answer was short and sweet, though not particularly definitive. Not for Red Rock, he said, the fate of Brer Rabbit who got first one paw, then another, and then all four stuck when he attempted to communicate with the tar baby trap set up for him by Brer Fox. Red Rock will, said Andrew Bell, flip assets as and when required, and generate cash flow that way, rather than going out of its way to acquire a cash generative asset. It won’t get stuck on any one particular asset, he continued, and the implication here seemed to be that even the joint investment in Jubilee Mines might be turned to a profit, rather than held for the long term. Naturally, though, Pallinghurst is in the driving seat on that one.

http://www.minesite.com/nc/minews/singlenews/article/standing-room-only-at-the-57th-minesite-forum-with-gold-pushing-the-thousand-dollar-mark-there-was/1.html