Goldman Sachs, which previously had S32 on its conviction list is now neutral-rated. It shows how quickly perception can change.
I have been watching videos today about the site on the Argentinean border which we have a 15% stake in with Canadian-listed junior Aldebaran Recourses. Looks quite promising. And as the report says, "...
continued exploration drilling at our copper-lead-zinc-silver Peake prospect, to follow-up recent high-grade copper exploration results". Ash in a previous post is right -- Peake is so far into the distance that we can't have much conviction on it being developed. I put more faith in these projects though, than the Arctic / Trilogy joint venture. There is probably billions of dollars in metals on meteors and comets zooming through space which would be easier to develop and drag back to earth than Arctic! That bloody hundreds-of-kilometres road.... Pity high-grade deposits can't all be found a few dozen short kilometres from a major capital city like, say, Chalice Mining's Gonneville deposit. Oh dear, that doesn't work either
I only mention Peake to argue we've got a significant asset on our hands that seems much bigger than first realised.
However the Hermosa site, despite being over-budget and over-time is looking to be not just
a mine, but potentially a cluster of two, three, possibly four different, unique mines. Obviously the priority is FAST-41 approval, and FID for Taylor and/or Clark ASAP, but in terms of the entire site being as lucrative over the coming decades as it appeared when we bought it, I'd say it keeps getting better and better. We have so many options there to build the initial mine(s), and then continue exploration at the precinct for many years to come.
Gaurav from Intelligent Investor and another guy from a publication I'm unfamiliar with were on
The C.all yesterday. Gaurav was negative on Hermosa, saying that S32's plans had radically changed from when it was purchased, and two different mining techniques are proposed for Taylor and Clarke. The other guest believed S32 was "a hold on valuation grounds". I would hardly say we are over-valued at $3.22! Gaurav implied S32 were making the rules up as it went along, and trying to put a square peg in a round hole rather than pausing, or completely scrapping Hermosa, as too much had been invested in it already. He seemed in favour of Hermosa being all-but written off. It's a strange point, given we have world-class technical people employed to analyse the site and are very keen on it. And the resource at Taylor, Clark, Peake and Flux seems to be getting better the more we look. Building a mine from the exploration stage surely isn't like buying a table from IKEA and assembling it with enclosed instruction. You would expect changes along the way, and things not going according to plan. There must be hundreds of different moving parts to consider.
The share price has been slipping since January and $3.00 seems a foregone conclusion. Yet the markets always seem to surprise. Just when you think "I'll wait for $3.00" the opposite happens.
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