Troy had a superb September quarter, 9m or 10m in positive cashflow, so not that far from your figures. But that is before all debt repayments.In the December quarter not much has changed, the plant is still operating the same tonnage. Still mining the same tonnage. Same costs. But Troy has 5k ounces less in production due to the temporary Smarts 3 closure. And that means 8.5m less cashflow. Maybe even more.
The stated they had liquidity of 14.2m end of September. Operations for December quarter are neutral - best guess. 4.2m debt repayment to Investec. 1.5m to creditors. 1.5m in exploration. Leaves Troy with 7m liquidity. Add the cr proceeds and you are at roughly 10m. Deduct the 4.2m January debt repayment and you are at 5.8m liquidity now / after the 9th.
Current quarter will see better cashflow than the December quarter, maybe 2m. So 7.8m liquidity end of quarter. The last Investec debt repayment end of March will be 7.3m. So in theory Troy could muddle through. The problem is just that the liquidity contains gold in circuit and you can only get all of that if you stop the plant, in a shutdown scenario. For continuing ops maybe 3-4m are out of reach. And exploration would be pretty limited too.
The stockpile is not going to help as it is low grade on average and the mill is the bottleneck. If you were to shutdown mining, the stockpile could be used to produce one quarter at maybe sub $500. If you continue mining or development the grade of the stockpile is not enough to avoid a huge cash outflow. Only Hicks ore makes operations neutral and actually doing the cutback (costs again and time needed) will bring in significant cashflow. So any reasonable scenario sees Troy renegotiating the end of quarter payment. But why should Investec bear the risk of operational hiccups when all they get is the same dept repayment they are entitled to end of March but now at a later date? They will demand to participate in the exploration upside, i.e. get more options. Getting enough capital and pay down the Investec debt once and for all while at the same time aggressively exploring is the way forward. We are not talking about green fields exploration here but about bringing a found deposit into JORC categories.
Just as a remainder, we are discussing a $6m quarterly difference in cashflow with focus on the old operations. At the same time we have a new deposit where every indication is it is at least 400k ounces of very high grade ore, much higher than Smarts 3. I am very happy to accept issuing some additional shares now (going to fellow shareholders, SPP does not allow me to take on enough) and later on only getting maybe a 5- instead of a 7-bagger. With the benefit of completely eliminating short-term risk.
Muddling through will mean there still is a slight risk of failure. Maybe it means we avoid some dilution. It means good cashflows again from Smarts 3 after the cutback is done. The problem is we would still be stuck with old operations. Not bad, but significant components of Troy's value (Smarts underground and $28.5m in deferred tax assets not on the balance sheet now) cannot be realized without significant investments. Old operations won't enable Troy to get there. And we would miss out on OC, a deposit that maybe will turn out to be the highest grade open-pit deposit in the world. If Troy goes down that road it is likely there will be at least one quarter in 2020 with no production at all. And having a 6 month delay is going to be very ugly considering takeovers. Gold is still in the doldrums now, no one has much cash. That will change.
Once again, don't be afraid to contact Troy. I contacted them back in 2017. They always listen to shareholders. I am very glad I did back then because I had some discussions with the Chairman cleaning up a lot of misconceptions I had. My greatest fear is that the chairman gets a wrong impression, not all shareholders will be like me (my focus is long-term and mainly considering operations, not so much the short-term share price). So it would be good for them to get your point of view as well. I am sure if you drop them your contact details, just an email or so, you will get an answer from them.
