I think a good comparison for us would be Azumah Resources also exploring in Ghana.
For those that are not aware, this is in the portfolio of the D&D report and Alex Cowie is very bullish about thier prospects, having alot of positive things to say about Ghana as a mining province. He indicates that it is almost like Australia from a political perspective for mining.
Here are the basics:
AZM - 1.2mill oz - targeting a 1mt/pa plant starting with 70,000oz moving to 100,000oz production. Feasibility studies in Q1 next year. I can't find a timeline for production but expect that it would be in the next two years. They have very aggressive exploration potential like SBL. AZM do have large exploration licences.
MCap - wait for it - $169mill (and D&D are bullish on it at that price - for more info buy the publication, well worth it too by the way)
SBL - 1.5mill oz - targeting 26,000oz first pour Jan 2011, expansion plans for 700,000 t/pa plant with 40,000oz in second year
MCap $56mill
OK - I know there are alot of other parameters when looking at this than basic exploration and production figures, and we don't want to distort the facts by over simplifying. AZM does appear to be a very professional operation. Both companies have large exploration targets. AZM is possibly larger in the short term, but not by that much. Both seem to have similar grades and both are sitting on very prospective exploration areas.
I know I don't have space to list all of the parameters but these are the basic important facts.
When looking at it like this however, you begin to see how undervalued SBL is. With production scheduled for Jan and a resource of 1.5mill oz I just can't see how this can stay so cheap.
When I compare to the likes of an Aussie explorer like BCN which is targeting a JORC resource of 500,000oz and had buyers running it up to $40 odd million on the back of a The Speculator column in the Eureka Report, and people still bullish on it when they don't even know if they have enough gold (I think they are still around 100,000oz) SBL has to have some legs. There seem to be many other Aussie gold stocks with larger MCaps that have well less than 1mill oz
I would honestly like somebody with more knowledge on the gold industry to pull holes in the argument and tell us we are dreaming - what am I missing? - the clear figures don't seem to support a value of 56mill with a resource this size so close to production. Please, and I mean this sincerely, does anybody who has looked at the figures for SBL properly disagree with this?
SBL Price at posting:
2.9¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
