Just back from the AGM and here's my take on it .....Probably...

Just back from the AGM and here's my take on it .....

Probably about 50 people attended plus the management team.

All resolutions were passed with no nasty questions for the team to deal with.

Peter Bowler ran through the presentation, but it was a his quiet confidence and that of the rest of the team when questioned which struck me. They all seem to be on top of their game and I sense that there is certainly more good news to come soon from the BDR camp. Announcements are due soon from a number of areas including duckhead mining commencements, stockpiling of iron ore concentrate from the magnetic separation plant, and drilling at Tropicana. He also mentioned how efficiencies in the plant are improving and how they are pleasantly surprised with the throughput and recovery percentages each month. He seems to think that there are more improvements to come in this area given that we bought the best plant and equipment in the first place.

He mentioned how well relations with Anglo and the Brazilian government were going since Anglo's port incident recently. We are now the largest player in Amapa and hence revenue source for the government. It seems that permitting for Duckhead has progressed very efficiently and we should be digging out the good stuff soon. Everyone in Amapa wants us to get started as it suits all parties to get that ore out of the ground.

He seemed unconcerned with the gold price given we have a hedge in place and once we get the mag sep plant up and running (and selling concentrate to Anglo, plus some other efficiencies) we will be such a low cost producer that the current spot price isn't a major concern to us.

Our current debt of 110 million to Macquarie will have 9 million capital paid back next month and with the mill throughput figures he showed us (and future improvements in efficiency and grades), it shouldn't be much of a stretch to see more than this amount paid off each month moving forward.

Dividends were mentioned and it was clear that paying off the debt is priority number one, so we are not to expect talk of dividends till early next year when the debt is paid off.

I'm still very happy to hold .....