afr article today

There was an article in the AFR today about PEM. I read the print edition at work. I did a search for Perilya on the afr.com site and a link came up but you gotta be a subscriber or pay $3.50 for the article. Anyhow, the search shows a wee bit from the article,

"Perth-based diversified miner Perilya may have flown under investors' radar for the best part of the past four years, but the company has emerged as the best-performing stock on the Australian Stock Exchange this year..."

From recollection the article said that the company has benefited from a combination of a surge in the zinc price, no zinc hedging, and new management that have more of a production focus, as opposed to the previous management who focused on exploration.

The other amazing thing the article said was that because earnings per share for 2007 is projected at about 57c the company was now trading on a PE of 4x. Sector average is a PE of 8x so the article said that the shares could double even from here!

Warwick Grigor from Far East Capital and an analyst from one of the big brokers were quoted in the article. It was all positive.

Apparently Stock Resource had these as a sell a while back saying they have had a great run but there was concern about the ageing mine. Maybe so, but management seem to be doing a great job and the zinc supplies on LME just keep getting lower by the day, so I'm holding onto mine.

The other thing I never see mentioned anywhere is that at one stage PEM had a 20% stake in Strike Oil (STX) and they sold it for a nice profit I believe, so they are pretty astute with their cash too.