norton cheapest gold producer in the world, page-20

Loki,

With regards to your question as to am I trying to scare people? As a rule I cant stand seeing people lose their money by investing in companyies that lack substance, seeing shareholders funds used to pay directors' fees that don't deserve to share the same oxygen we breath, and I have seen it time and time again. That is what motivates me.


With respect to balance sheets:

I well remember another company, Burns Philp was its name.
From memory, it had assets of over $1.3bn, non-current of course, and debt of approximately $1.0bn.
The bank that I worked for was the biggest sole lender to Burns Philp and I advised them that they should not lend to the company due to the composition of their balance sheet.
It was an iconic australian institution.
Problem was that the non-current assets included "Goodwill"
of about $700M, that is what they paid for the brand names they purchased in the USA.
Of course, they could never realise that "Goodwill" and when they were forced to write it down, they had negative shareholders funds.

With Norton, the "non-current assets" include all the purchase price for Bellamel in addition to the mine development costs.

Think Anaconda, think CopperCo. Take away some of these non-current assets and the Net Equity is looking pretty sick.

But you are right, they increased cash reserves by $15M over the last 12 months despite the blowout in production costs in the first year (that of course adds to my level of comfort, the blowoout that is). At that rate, they will have enough cash to cover their liabilities in how long?

All I can say, is I have told you my opinion, you think it is wrong , I dont care to cover too many stocks but I know too much about the background here to let people get fooled.

The other stocks I have written about are all doing as I expected them to, that proof is available on line, time will tell about this one but thank god I backed my judgement and avoided this one.

BFN