For one, SFR has no partners (JV's). This is very important for financing purposes and getting the interest of the institutional investors. Why is it that no institutions are in PEX at this early stage? SFR had institutional support early on.
Secondly, SFR had/has open cut high grade mineralisation of copper, gold and silver so they were mining fairly quickly and at the same time were developing the underground operations.
Thirdly, half a billion dollars to develop any of PEX's deep underground mines is not going to be an easy task (impossible is my view) in future with the current structure and JV's with various companies.
SFR had/has over 10 million tonnes of 6% copper, over 2% gold and approx 15g/t of silver.
OPEX is around $1.00 per pound of copper.
Forget SFR today, it had it's day in the sun as you pointed out, it's a miner not an explorer.
Major corporates won't touch PEX in my opinion for reasons above. I'm sure there are more reasons.
Apollo Hill is worthless at 0.9%. Too much CAPEX is required.
Maybe PEX will announce sometime soon some rock samples with 40-50g/t of gold or even better still some discovery of gold.
Shareholder's best outcome in my opinion is that one of the JV partners buy out PEX's share of the projects or vice versa.
How far away are these guys from putting out the starting point of project evaluation? that is, a scoping study?
JMT
PEX Price at posting:
12.5¢ Sentiment: Sell Disclosure: Not Held
(20min delay)