2018 - The Year Ahead

Not a very merry Christmas this year for NTL bulls. The fabled Half Year report turned out to be half a drill hole too short and twice as much burn after no new news was forthcoming. So, where to in 2018 for NTL?

Looks to me like Director's are warming up for a drill campaign at Rahu. Sure, this may add reserves to NTL's total, but shareholders seem all to ready to forget that the market has re-rated NTL based on it actually EXTRACTING gold and generating REVENUE (and, god forbid, maybe a profit?!). This, along with the oft-mentioned concentrators, is going to cost the company a heckuva lot of money, which NTL does not have.

Company has also stated it will start "grab sampling" and "bulk sampling", although what that means in terms of actual tonnage hauled out of the mine is anyone's guess. All we know is that it is a far-cry from ACTUAL production on an industrial scale. This limits any sort of upside potential in the company (refer to point 1 above - revenue, not reserves, is key now).

Management certainly needs to up their game in regards to PR - constant retractions and mistakes in announcements is ENG101 and they have failed at it. Whether they learnt from the balls up on the SPP and options is also up for questioning. Guess we'll find out later in 2018 when the pass the cap around again!

Don't even get me started on the overhang still there from politics (don't rule out changing on a whim to kill the company) and the totally unnecessary overseas trips by managers!

Chart-wise, while the downtrend is broken, 2.0 to 2.2 are MASSIVE resistance (NB Jonu - this is the opposite of support!). Even after the fabled HY report, the SP refused to climb any higher than 1.9 before retreating again.Still plenty of sellers waiting in the wings to offload into any strength. Downtrend should recommence soon enough, lacking any sort of news from now on.

So, imho, 2018 is going to bring: ANOTHER cap raise (I'll eat my hat if they don't, that's how sure of it I am!); more drilling (and unfocussed management...); half-arsed mining; and further company junkets to foreign lands on shareholder funds.

This company has a massive hill to climb - not impossible, but improbable.