re: lsg/kcn/oxr - for acturtle Agree with acturtle. The key...

re: lsg/kcn/oxr - for acturtle Agree with acturtle. The key topic of this thread is which gold stocks will appreciate the most over the next year or so.

The biggest gains in % terms will obviously come from the spec end of the market, but whether they can be sustained over a long period is unlikely.

The biggest sustainable gains are likely to come from new producers. The transition from an explorer to a successful producer usually , as acturtle puts it, turbo charges the price. Also new producers coming online this year and next year will be unhedged or lowly hedged, taking advantage of the rising gold price.

This is not to say that KCN and OXR won't both do well. Both have high visibility and as the strongest performers in the sector, will attract more investors. Both are also in the ASX 200 and probably meet the criteria of institutional investors. If instos are forced to invest more money in the gold sector, their choices are a lot more limited these days, and KCN and OXR will be the obvious targets (along with NCM LHG etc ).

KCN I still believe has a lot of upside, I think it can double in the next year, but it will be getting close to fully valued at that price. Profit this FY will exceed $US 25 million ($42m AUD). Current market cap $308m. Mine expansion due for completion in Dec 03 will increase production by 50%. Downside is that hedging kicks in next year, but there are only 32000 committed ounces, about 13% of production. So I reckon still plenty of upside with KCN, and you can extract more out if you margin loan, Comsec has a 40% lending ratio for KCN.

OXR well plenty has been said about that already. It has a market cap of 500 million already, it will be a lot harder for it to double this year to 1 billion.

RBK looking ok but BFS hasn't been released yet.

LSG, HIG no comment, don't know enough about them yet.

I'll also mention LAF is worth a look, not a pure gold stock, but production due to start early 2004.

I hold KCN OXR RBK LAF BSG