My thoughts are 1. Coburn. Agree it is not spectacular however it offers good life of mine with sound economics and is essentially ready to go. It is dominated by zircon therefore best avenue is probably finding a significant scale zircon end user as a partner if such an entity exists. The right partner could see Coburn become the foundation of a solid company. 2 Mount Gunson copper. It is really two projects. a. A reasonable known near surface asset excised from the Xstrata agreement for GUN. It has high cobalt content that creates problems in producing economic end product. New extraction techniques currently being trialled may lead to economic breakthrough sufficient to encourage investor partners on a farm in basis. Won't be a company maker but could provide revenue to run the business and fund new assets/exploration within the next 3 years b. A scent of a possible whale copper deposit very deep underground. I have no real faith in this, nor it seems do Xstrata now with their decision to farm out their share. But if there is something like Carapateena then there's rocket fuel potential under GUN's share price depending what size stake they keep. Likely dilution to maybe less than 25% I would guess.
3. Bill Bloking's previous experiences being oil and gas. Firstly I don't think BB needs to return to his background to be effective at GUN because for eg mineral sands expertise can be bought. The important thing is his management skill and business acumen which are fully transferrable. That said, going to oil and gas is certainly an option but it requires capital. This would best come from realising value from other assets - most likely Coburn I would think. You'd want $10-20 million if at all possible to fund a serious crack at new ventures. To get that sort of money out of Coburn at present could be a challenge so the strategy to try and add further value to GUN (advance Coburn permitting, promote the asset and seek partners plus similar in the excised area of Mt Gunson) is the right first step.
GUN Price at posting:
2.3¢ Sentiment: LT Buy Disclosure: Held
