February 4, 2022: Sabre Gold Mines CEO Giulio Bonifacio talks to GSN about Yukon Cash Costs, Heap Leach Extraction and SGLD Insider Buying
Youtube: Interview with Sabre Gold CEO Julio Bonafacio
Screen shots from the vid below... showing:
1. insiders claim to have bought around 5 million shares in the open market between October and December last year... between $0.10 and $0.06 per share... and
2. a revised schedule shows they've kicked the can down the road again... now saying the things that were supposed to be done by the end of last year... and then supposed to be done Q1 / Q2 this year... are now not "planned" to be done until the second half of this year... so "production" keeps slip sliding away into the future.
That's not the only "slippage" apparent here. Golden Predator was supposed to be doing a Feasibility Study... they were still saying we'd see it "soon" last fall... pushed it off to this year... and, then, in a sleight of hand they delivered a PEA instead ? It probably makes perfect sense to reformulate the plan... to expand the footprint of the mine being permitted to include those additional resources exploration will likely be able to develop... It's the right decision... The problem here isn't so much the decisions being made... but the horrible communications about the decisions they make... And, it looks a whole lot like "moving backwards" to a casual observer...
I also note the schedule includes "Infill panel drill results with Assays Pending" slated for Q1 2022 ? I don't recall having seen ANYTHING in the comms about doing more drilling... or more results pending ? They updated the resource already ? ???? What does the new round of drilling support ?
Guessing... I'd say that after NEVDF had its "issues" last year... the board took a step back to double check on the work that Bonifacio had done, was doing and planning here... didn't like what they found... and required hiring a new team of mining engineers to sanity check things. Bonifacio... an accountant... tries to do things on the cheap. And, the consequences of that were already apparent here "last time'... under American Bonanza... and again this cycle the cost of that approach made apparent enough at NEVDF.
Last year, they did move to improve the quality of the employees charged with managing the project engineering, here... and, I'd say things have actually improved in result... but probably doing things the right way will cost more... and take longer... including time to correct for the prior errors in expectations and planning. It looks bad... looks worse than it is... mostly because they don't want to admit any of that...
At least at Brewery Creek they included a table of potentials versus the gold price showing how it scales against the market. At Copperstone, they drilled until they found a mass of high grade... updated the resource to include it... but, at the same time, increased the cut off grades from 1 gm / ton up to 3.5 g /ton... so they reported a "nice" small % increase in the resource... but at the same time they cut out about half the known gold that they used to count ? It's not a problem to recompute the resource while considering the changed economics... but, they should note that 1 gram per ton gold still exists... and will, or should, become a part of the economic calculus again, at some price ? At the same time... they did their economic projections at Copperstone based on $1500/ounce ? At Brewery Creek they've used $1700... which seems it makes not a lick of sense... that the same crew use different POG in two different projects ?
On Dec 17th they announced the shareholders meeting approved a reverse split and capital reduction.
It was not popular... and I don't see much evidence they made any real effort to sell it... resulting in a significant number of unhappy "holders" whose votes were withheld:
Share Consolidation Carried 194,102,767 vs 44,241,424, 81.44% to 18.56%
Reduction in Stated Capital Carried 181,527,606 vs 41,972,874, 81.22% to 18.78%
In consequence, since then, around 20 million shares have been sold, driving the share price from over a dime when they announced it... down to $0.04 to $0.05 now... The selling appears it is tapering off, now... so we may be at or nearing a bottom in the trade.
The impact so far... is that they absorbed Golden Predator... doubling their value (or more)... and, since then... have managed to deliver a result that has both companies today valued the same as one of them a year ago...
I noted today that in October... when it was already trading down to $0.07 - $0.08... there was still an analyst in Toronto who re-iterated carrying it as a buy with a price target of $0.37 Now, it looks like that was a typo and he got the decimal point in the wrong place.... or, his projection was for a post-reverse share price... ???
My view of it... is that 635 million shares is far too many, and the one for ten makes sense... But, the WAY they've done it appears to be designed and intended to abuse shareholders. When they merged with Golden Predator... they could easily have redone the share numbers... rather than just adding them up... and no one would have batted an eye. And, as late as June they were "more or less" denied a need or intended to do it ?
For the most part... I think they're making OK decisions as far as "the right thing" for the projects... But, HOLY CRAP... the WAY they do what they do... and the near total lack of communications about what they're doing... is just ABSOLUTELY TERRIBLE....
Bonifacio seems to view his job as being the "director of value recognition prevention"...
My guess is... in result of their dithering... they might well miss the window of opportunity that's opening up now... I see lots of miners making "bottoms" on the charts right now... and, there's good reason to expect that the miners as a group might do pretty well as a group in late February and into the end of March...
 |
