Calandra's Jan 28 03 column edited for just Candente related excerpts:
Investors choose minerals over paper Vancouver crowd swarms gold, mining exhibitors
By Thom Calandra, CBS.MarketWatch.com
Last Update: 11:48 AM ET Jan 28, 2003
VANCOUVER (CBS.MW) -
"We're digging pits straight to bedrock before we drill, because it's cheaper, a lot more
efficient," says Joanne Freeze, a geologist and chief executive of Candente Resource Corp.
(DNT). Freeze's tiny Candente doesn't have too much of a choice. In Peru, local miners dig
bullion out of the ground for as little as $40 an ounce.
Freeze is one of scores of executives and geologists in Vancouver this week, telling their
stories to investors and analysts at two events. She joined more than 100 mostly junior-level
companies at an investor pre-show to the annual Cordilleran Roundup in this Canadian
town, which is as close to ground zero as you can get to the mining and exploration sector.
Far smaller companies, such
as Freeze's Candente, which is exploring in Peru and Canada, says the entire exploration
industry's successes brighten prospects for all legitimate miners.
"Anglogold (AU), Newmont, Placer Dome (PDG), they all need product," says Freeze at
Candente, which is worth just $11 million Canadian, even after a one-year doubling of the
company's stock price. "The largest miners have all let this exploration activities decline to
perilously low levels."
Kaiser, a newsletter writer whose Bottom Fishing Report sizes up the relative value of
exploration companies based on estimated resources and other mining metrics, says a
$375-an-ounce gold company "makes it very economic for most of the juniors."
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