My wife again found this in The west australian today, not a bad...

My wife again found this in The west australian today, not a bad read at all.

23/11/2012

Sirius story keeps dreams alive


It's rare to sit through an annual meeting in the junior mining sector this year without the words Sirius Resources and Nova being brought up.

Not only are managing directors across the board - particularly those in the nickel and copper sectors - using the Perth junior as the exploration prototype, they are banking on the Sirius story as the "light at the end of the tunnel" for their more-often-than-not suffering shareholders.

And why wouldn't they?

The Sirius story is what every small publicly listed company - not to mention every shareholder - dreams of.

On July 23 Sirius went into a trading halt at 5.7�. On July 26 the company, which had been scraping the bottom of the barrel for exploration funding, announced its maiden drill hole at Nova, about 100km north-east of Norseman.

Its shares went berserk, jumping more than 5000 per cent in less than four months after hitting highs of $3.27 earlier this month. Sirius shares closed at $2.55 yesterday.


At today's annual meeting, investors will get their first chance to thank managing director Mark Bennett and his team for making them incredibly rich.

However, one question remains: how big is Nova? The company suffered its first sign of investor nervousness earlier this month after a drilling update around the periphery of Nova indicated it might not be as big as first thought.

No resource statement has yet been released, with feverish drilling around the nickel-copper deposit continuing. Estimates of the overall resource range from 150,000 tonnes to 260,000t of nickel and 75,000t to 95,000t of copper.

The ongoing funding for the drilling program does not appear to be an immediate problem, with Sirius raising almost $10 million since the end of September through the conversion of 60¢ options.

Another 7.68 million options in the company, exercisable at 60¢, expire at the end of the year with 33 million, again in the money at 60¢, finishing by August 2014.

One of the main holders is veteran prospector Mark Creasy.

_WestBusiness _reported that it could be up to a $260 million-plus windfall for Mr Creasy through his 30 per cent stake in Nova, his 23 per cent shareholding and options that could be conservatively valued at more than $80 million. It was revealed yesterday Mr Creasy has also been picking up Sirius stock on market, buying just under $3 million Sirius shares over the past two months.
Mr Creasy sums up the Nova discovery well. "It's things like (Nova) that keep people interested," he said. "Without those big wins, well, no one's going to punt."