Justis, I had a very short call with the Chairman in the morning. I just wanted to know if there is anything new out of the ordinary, but it seems not. I enquired about John's sales and indeed it seems to be as I suspected, out of his indirect holdings where he really only owns part of the shareholding and it seems it was not his decision to sell. Next enquiry was about the cut-back. Last update said it was going according to plan and it seems - I did not get this 100% - they are in ore now. As a long-term shareholder you will know that June in general is the wettest month and they are reducing mining somewhat from mid-June quarter or so to back to normal in July or August mitigating less ore mined by using stockpiles. So September quarterly production is not distributed evenly over the quarter. Troy needs to get the Smarts 3 ore in the September quarter meaning ore needs to be accessible 100% from end of July latest. Remember that while "in ore" sounds great it could mean 10% of the fleet operating at Smarts 3 is mining ore and 90% still stripping or vice versa. So nothing new besides what we already know it seems.
Regarding the resource size I think whatever figure - it will be only be a small part of the gold in the ground. You have to start somewhere. My latest understanding is that maybe it will be possible to mine multiple parallel gold zones with a single pit near TRC001 meaning the pit could be much wider and thus much deeper than what they have at Smarts and Hicks. Overall geology seems to be more complex and I guess much more work is needed to define reserves for all parts of the deposit. Underground seems very plausible now too.
So the Troy story remains unchanged, cut-back needed for ensuring production until May 2020, then the near-surface ore at TRC001 at OC, then the pit near TRC001 going to grater depth probably meaning LOM increased back to several years. After that the true potential of OC comes into play...
TRY Price at posting:
8.6¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
