Claude, <<Is there any reason to believe this story?>> I have no direct personal experience for proof. However, Scott Gardner, the CEO of USPS, has been a no hype individual (no USPS webpage, PRs, or anything except personal communication). I talked to him last year and was very impressed. He originally was just a large investor in USPS which "owned" some of the old Santa Fe Gold property rich in PGMs. USPS invested over $1MM in a prototype plant at their Wikieup, AZ property. They have produced Pt, received refinery checks, but the process was less than economic with their ore and past process. Gardner also seems to be able to find investment funding as needed.
The new development is an apparent breakthrough in PGM metal recovery process by Global's (GPGI) consultant Tilford(sp?). However, Global is broke and was almost bankrupt. Gardner with 2 other private companies have found funding to begin prototype mining at Global. Gardner is also a good manager and has offered to operate the mine. The "mine" Pro Forma may be limited to the 1MM ton ore pile at the Global property. Everyone understands the difficulty of understanding "value" in a disturbed ore pile, but at least 3 independent operators have confirmed significant (economic) consistent recovery from that ore pile. Two of those operators I fully believe. I also understand that funding people have already accepted the results as valid.
Is this another just too good to be true? Maybe, but maybe not. One risk I see is that the ore pile (screened tailings from the AZ highway department) may not be homogenous and the test were conducted on "hot spots", but I suspect that the funding people must have considered that also.
What's interesting is that GPGI is currently trading before the PR came out at 3 ($0.30) times USPS. IMO they should at least be equal. Just running the PR numbers for P/E potential has 50 ton/day at ~$6/share and 500 ton/day at ~$30/share.
Is this all true? I've seen BreX, IPMCF, and many others, been there, done that. However, IMO USPS at $0.10 seems cheap for the risk. |
