Ann: Drilling underway at Espiritu gold-silver target, page-41

This is an interesting take on Copper moving forwards. The likes of CLA & STM are newbies in elephant countries in an up and coming price commodity.
Copper
With the gold sector running as hot as you like thanks to $A2,700/oz prices, it’s nice to see things perking up in the copper space on the back of the red metal’s strong price recovery.
Copper averaged all of $US2.50/lb in the June half but is now doing nicely at $US3.07/lb.
There are lots of reasons for the recovery and why sentiment is now strongly to the upside, all of which were summed up nicely by US investment firm Bernstein.
“What makes for a good commodity stew? A dollop of demand strength. A sprinkle of supply concerns. A rising cost curve. Minimal threats from alternatives. We see all these ingredients and more for the copper sector and are thus more bullish than both consensus commodity forecasts and the forward curve,” Bernstein said.
It is tipping $US3.13/lb copper in 2022, $US3.40/lb in 2023, and $US3.67/lb in 2024.
BHP reckons that once COVID-19 (hopefully) passes, new supply due to come online between 2021-24 will temporarily tilt the market into modest supply surplus, keeping a lid on prices.
But like Bernstein, BHP sees plenty of reasons for price optimism post-2024 given the need for higher copper prices to encourage more investment in new capacity.
“Grade decline, resource depletion, increased input costs, water constraints and a scarcity of high-quality future development opportunities are likely to result in the higher prices needed to attract sufficient investment to balance the market,” BHP said.
That’s all very interesting, but unlike the ASX gold sector where hundreds of names are available for perusal, there isn’t much on offer when it comes to leverage to the copper thematic amongst the juniors, which of course goes to BHP’s call on there being a “scarcity” of future development opportunities.
The good news in all that is that the ASX juniors with copper development credentials can expect greater attention as the copper thematic unfolds."