re: all time closing highs 6 days in a row!!! A distinct lack of...

re: all time closing highs 6 days in a row!!!

A distinct lack of Sellers exist.



Nickel is currently down,



But likely to bounce back soon.

I pullback in JBM's shareprice would be very nice.

I am happy either way, up or down.

$7 looks like the "magic" number to me.

With Nickel prices where they currently are, JBM would be unlikely to trade for over $8 any time soon unless "a rabbit was pulled from a hat".

JBM holds many "hats" but risk/reward ratio must be considered.

As a shareholder I am more than happy with the leadership of Kerry Harmanis & may his Reign last many, many, many more years.




Dig for victory
12/01/2004




The hottest 50 companies
No. 1 Jubilee Mines
No. 2 WA Newspapers Holdings
No. 3 Fantastic Holdings
No. 4 Cochlear
No. 5 UNiTAB
No. 6 Wridgways Australia
Companies ranked 7-35
Companies ranked 36-50
The Speculator


Industry>Mining and metals
Finance>Shares


Kerry Harmanis had a dream a decade ago. Jubilee Mines is that dream come true. By Alan Deans

It's hard to credit it, but shares in Jubilee Mines 10 years ago were selling for just 4¢ each. “It was a real penny dreadful,” admits executive chairman Kerry Harmanis. It sank so low that cash was next to impossible to get, so its founder bought placements at 5¢, 9¢, 12¢ and also at 20¢ to keep it from going bust. Even if few others had faith, he did.
Harmanis quit his job as a Perth lawyer in the late 1970s to go prospecting. He scratched around the goldfields of Western Australia for a number of years, tenacious enough to believe that he would make that elusive strike. Eventually a package of leases was assembled in an area called Kathleen Valley, some 400km north of Kalgoorlie near Leinster. He sensed that they contained gold.

Sir Samuel Mines was floated on the stock exchange five months before the 1987 sharemarket crash, raising $3.5m to finance exploration. To demonstrate that fortune favours the brave, the budding entrepreneur also listed a second company – Jubilee Gold Mines – with leases in other areas, three days after share prices spun into freefall that October.

Harmanis had his start, but seven frustrating years later he was desperate. The two companies were merged into one in 1992 and named Jubilee Mines, but attempts to revive old gold workings at Bellevue failed when bullion prices collapsed some time later. Knowing that he barely had enough money left for one last chance, he took a bold step.

South of Jubilee’s tenement boundaries, another exploration company was looking for nickel. The Leinster region was also a hot area for WMC, Australia’s largest nickel miner. Plenty of explorers had looked nearby, particularly interested in the so-called ultra mafic rocks that host rich nickel deposits elsewhere in Western Australia. Asked by Harmanis what should be done, Jubilee’s geologist came up with the idea of re-sampling old drill cores from their tenements to test for nickel trace elements such as platinum, palladium and copper. Sure enough, they were there.


Because the soil chemistry looked highly promising, Jubilee ran a second test on the electrical conductivity and magnetic footprint of the underlying rocks. If electricity passed easily through them, that would also indicate the presence of nickel. It did. What is more, the areas of conductivity and geochemistry coincided. “The two bullseyes overlapped,” Harmanis recalls.

The rest of Jubilee’s story is widely known. It drilled and found Cosmos beneath the bullseyes, proving up a resource that today is one of Australia’s richest nickel ore bodies. During the past five years, metal dug from within the original Kathleen Valley gold leases have transformed it into one of Australia’s hottest companies as profits, return on equity and dividends soared.

Jubilee Mines has shot to fame as our best-performing company when ranked on return on equity averaged over five years. It produced a stunning return of 71% in 2003-04, capping figures of 56%, 46% and 50% in previous periods.

Since mining began in 2000, more than $640m of nickel concentrates have been produced. Every dollar of revenue has returned 30¢ in net profits, making Cosmos a veritable money mine. At $4.40-a-share, the company is now worth about $550m. Harmanis’ stake equates to about $100m.

“That means very little to me,” he says. “I don’t feel any different now than I did all those years ago. I just want to share the rewards with those who have supported us.”

Cosmos came on stream as nickel prices were strengthening. The record $95m earned last year was boosted by the metal hitting a fresh peak. It is unlikely to be maintained this year, however, because prices are lower and costs will be marginally higher. That has taken some of the shine off Jubilee’s share price, despite it having excellent growth prospects around Cosmos.

Harmanis rattles off a list of neighbouring deposits that Jubilee is eagerly proving up. Close by is a high-grade zone called Alec Mairs, which will be mined soon. “It is all shaping up very well. The nickel ore is contained in old lava flows, which ran like rivers. Once you find a fertile system, you can find more of them without too much trouble.” Also being drilled are Anomaly 1, Anomaly 3 and Anomaly 4, along with Prospero and Mercury.

Jubilee is sitting on about $112m in cash and receivables, enough to bankroll it into a variety of new ventures. “There is temptation out there,” Harmanis concedes, adding that people frequently bring deals to him.

“We must think about what is best for our shareholders. High-grade nickel is our first priority. Nothing makes the money or has the margins as high-grade nickel sulphides. But everything is pretty much over-heated. We have decided that we have the best areas already, so we need to focus there. We do not want to dilute what we have.”

Highest priority is to prove up extra reserves, sufficient to convince investors that Jubilee will be around for years to come. There is enough now to last at current mining rates until early 2008. “Our challenge is sustainability,” Harmanis says. “The market tends to take the cup-is-half-empty approach, so we have to reassure them.”

CEO: Kerry Harmanis gave up the law in the 1970s to pursue gold prospects north of Kalgoorlie but a hunch led him to nickel in the 1980s.




Net profit (5 yr total): $183.6m Net equity (5 yr total): $333.9m

Returns (5 yr average): 56.48%

Research by IBISWorld

"Let the good times Roll"