I never give advise to anyone,for we all enter the share market knowing,we are all buying risk.
The facts are very clear on the matter Ash,the number of listed shares and or options doesn't determine a Resource company's success or failure,rather the said company's ability to find and ultimately economically bring into production whatever their target mineral is, is the key criteria.
Therefore Ash the two most important issues facing BYR,are the tonnage or volume and the grade or quality of the Giro deposits IMHO, nothing what soever to do with the amount of shares or options listed.
For your information;
Randgold’s grand plans for DRC
By William Clowes
In contrast to the prevailing mood in the mining sector, Randgold Resources founder and CEO Mark Bristow was upbeat at this year’s Mining Indaba in Cape Town.
During the annual industry jamboree, the London listed FTSE 100 gold miner released 2015 results revealing a $572m profit. Mr Bristow’s mines in west Africa and the Democratic Republic of Congo had produced a record 1.21m ounces of gold.
Randgold has managed to remain low cost and debt free, even as higher cost mines and established players have hemorrhaged money due to the rout in commodity prices.
Perhaps most significant were the numbers from Kibali, a joint venture with AngloGold Ashanti in northeast DRC. In this resource rich yet chronically underdeveloped country, Kibali’s production topped 600,000 ounces for the first time with a total cash cost of just over $600 per ounce.
DRC’s gold production jumped 30 percent in 2015, in large part due to Kibali’s better than expected results, from near zero in 2011.
The gold price’s recent jump to about $1,200 an ounce from a near seven year low of around $1,050 at the end of 2015 is doubtless putting an additional spring in Mr Bristow’s step.
Kibali and the DRC figure heavily in Mr Bristow’s plans. Randgold and AngloGold acquired Kibali in 2009 and spent $2.5bn building a gold mine in an area which until recently had been a war zone.
First gold was poured in September 2013, a full two years after the commodity started its precipitous decline from a peak of over $1,900 an ounce. Despite the weakness of the gold price during Kibali’s short life, Mr Bristow is optimistic about the region’s prospects.
Mr Bristow says gold would have to go “very low” for Kibali to cease to be profitable. Randgold’s five year plan for the mine shows total cash costs per ounce heading consistently downwards towards $520 while the grade of its gold rises. Power solutions
In most of DRC, acute power shortages are debilitating for the mining sector. Randgold’s do-it-yourself energy solutions are a key to Kibali’s competitive costs. Hydropower currently accounts for about 65 percent of the mine’s annual needs.
The aim, according to Mr Bristow, is to get it up to 80 percent. “The difference is 45 cents per kilowatt hour [for 100 percent diesel] compared to 10 cents,” he tells This is Africa. “When we looked at the viability of Kibali, the key driver in the returns was power costs.”
Whereas Mr Bristow’s counterparts in the Congolese mining heartland of Katanga were fed false promises of reliable supply from the national grid, that option was never available in the remote northeast.
Faced with the expense of running diesel generators, Randgold turned to one of the DRC’s many natural resources: water. The company has rehabilitated one hydropower facility, built another, and is about to commission a third. A fourth is in the pipeline. Kibali has only one competitor in the area, Canadian miner Banro. It has yet to complete its planned hydro plant to feed operations.
Kibali is only the start for Randgold in DRC, according to Mr Bristow. He is excited by the area’s geology, and has ambitions to “open up that part of the world and discover at least one, if not two or three more gold mines”.
Randgold has another exploration joint venture near Kibali and in signed three more in January with juniors in possession of exploration rights. The deals more than double the area Randgold has under licence.
Bristow has also made no secret of his desire to buy a project adjacent to Kibali currently owned by Dan Gertler’s controversial Fleurette Group. Mr Gertler, an Israeli businessman, has been frequently criticised for the manner in which he secured national assets in DRC and sold them on for sizeable profits. According to the Mail & Guardian, Mr Gertler’s name “has become synonymous with “grabbing and flipping”’.
Any eventual acquisition by Randgold will inevitably attract similar criticism from anti-corruption campaigners. Mr Bristow is unfazed. He insists that Gertler won the asset “fair and square”, and that Randgold “complies with every bit of corporate governance”. Mining code changes on hold
There was more good news for Randgold during the Indaba. Martin Kabwelulu, DRC’s mines minister, announced he would withdraw his long-vaunted plan to revise the Congolese mining code and make the fiscal regime more rigorous.
Mr Bristow has been a vocal opponent of Mr Kabwelulu’s efforts, and is pleased. “We built Kibali in under two years in the most challenging environment, and we never once asked for a favour because we built it under the code,” he claims.
Various officials have since scrambled to clarify that the minister did not mean to rule out any future redesign, but it seems to be off the table for now – especially while commodity prices are in a trough.
The current law was enacted in 2002. Mr Bristow believes it is “balanced, well written, aggressive and not a darling code for investors”. He praises the government for backing away from the rewrite.
It “takes a great man to withdraw from something he initiated”, says Mr Bristow of the mines minister's change of heart, claiming that the proposed code “would have destroyed the mining industry” – though he takes care to maintain that Kibali would have remained profitable regardless.
This view is not universal, however. Transparency watchdog Global Witness condemns the DRC government for having “caved in to industry pressure to maintain the cosy fiscal terms and lax regulations”.
On the political front, there are dangers on the horizon. President Kabila is constitutionally required to step down in December 2016. However, many fear he is now undermining the organisation of elections in order to stay in office. Violent protests rocked some of DRC’s major towns and cities in 2015. A peaceful strike left Kinshasa's streets empty on 19 February.
Thomas Perriello, the US special envoy to the Great Lakes region, recently told Congress that “a political crisis is building as the DRC prepares, or rather fails to prepare, for upcoming, historic elections”.
Mr Bristow admits he is “anxious”, but claims to be optimistic that politicians will bear the interests of the private sector in mind: “I trust that any new or transformed political dispensation requires a healthy economy, of which we are an integral part, so they will not hold that to ransom”.
The gold price might be volatile, but Mr Bristow sees a long and profitable future for Randgold in the DRC. He hopes his company will grow to dominate the gold mining sector.
“I have always said that if you want to hunt elephants, go to elephant country, and this is elephant country,” he says.
" Kibali is only the start for Randgold in DRC, according to Mr Bristow. He is excited by the area’s geology, and has ambitions to “open up that part of the world and discover at least one, if not two or three more gold mines”.
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