₪ David Pescod's Late Edition March 20, 2006
NOVA URANIUM (V-NUC) $3.66 +0.03
About the only thing you can count on for mining exploration is
that nothing ever gets done on time. Nova Uranium puts out an
announcement today (finally) about three weeks later than expected
that the rigs could be/should be turning today on their
Laurier property. Company president Don Moore tells us he’s on
the way to the property as we speak to make sure they are turning
and as far as the new time frame, they hope to have three holes
completed and off to the lab lickedy-split, but still expects 21 days
for first results out and if they do five holes, probably closer to 25
days turn around time. That will take us to roughly April 15th and
once again on this play, this is re-drilling a property that was
looked at almost three decades ago, hoping they can come up
with some of the same results. This is part of a property that was
drilled many years ago and they are simply trying to duplicate old
results. The stock has already had quite a move, so there are
those of us that expect there should be success. The one thing
that’s outstanding about Nova is its leverage. Unlike a Tahera,
with 830 million shares outstanding, Nova only has 17 million
shares, so should they find something significant….
CV TECHNOLOGIES (V-CVQ) $3.30 +0.30
Hockey man Don Cherry can be seen touting it just about everywhere
and we are talking about Cold-FX, the product owned by
CV Technologies for fighting the common cold. The company
with more than 100 million shares outstanding—this is their
primary product and there’s a little bit of excitement raised a
few weeks ago when a Vancouver Sun article quoted a few academics
that asked questions about whether Cold-FX and its
ginseng-based product actually worked at all? A couple of cold
seasons ago, our trio of three tried it. Sandra and myself figured
the expensive drug that you have to swallow handfuls of
pills to get the assumed benefits was a waste of time, whereas
Debbie seems to think it works. Either way, the folks at CV
Technologies which started trading on Toronto today, were
more than a little upset about the article. In a statement they
said, “We believe the article contains errors, misleading information,
improper context, unfamiliarity with cold and flu clinical
research and a pharmaceutical predisposition to curative care
rather than preventative care”. They also add, “The article,
written by a business columnist with little background in the
science of colds and flu relied exclusively on the opinions of
two academics who are not experts in cold and flu research or
clinical practice…” Sounds like they are a little ticked.
TAHERA DIAMONDS (T-TAH) $0.64 -0.06
We are still amazed by the number of questions we get on Tahera
Diamonds, which we will answer the same way. It’s not as
cheap a stock as some people think. Obviously folks look at a
$0.65 or $0.70 price and think it is a great/cheap way to get into
Tahera’s Jericho mine in the NWT, which is a small, but fairly
rich diamond producer of mid-term life expectancy. It is not as
cheap as it looks for the simple reason they have 830 million
shares outstanding fully diluted. That’s what makes it expensive
folks and the first question a person should be asking for
junior mining stories these days is how many shares outstanding.
With the number of public financings being done,
there are not a lot of stories out there that don’t give you much
leverage anymore. No we wouldn’t buy it and we note that
there’s not a lot of other analysts that are that fond of it either.
Westwind has a 12-month target of only $0.85; TD calls it a hold
and has a 12-month target of $0.75; whereas National Bank has
a target of $0.80.
INTL. FRONTIER RES. (V-IFR) $1.85 +0.01
On Friday we had mentioned that Clive Stockdale was
suggesting that if you are looking for yet another oil and
gas play (and aren’t afraid of those big oil inventories we
see these days) that International Frontier Resources was a
story to look at. Today, we get a very concise two-page
look at the company by Josef Schachter and his team at
Schachter Asset Management. Their bottom line: “IFR is
currently drilling 2 wells in the NWT and in 2006/07 plans
to drill 2-3 exploration wells in the UK North Sea exposing
shareholders to ~$14 in NAV upside. Due to the uncertainty
surrounding gas facilities in the NWT and the long
time frames until production can be brought on, our 12-
month stock price target of $3 assumes modest success
in either the NWT or UK North Sea”. You might want to
take a look at this report to see what the upside for the
Laurel Valley Prospect might have for International Frontier.
You’ll understand why we like Gulf Shores—for their
interest in the same play, once you see Schachter’s target
on this play….should it hit. And that’s why we like both of
them—for that one play. For copies, e-mail Sandra at sandra_
wicks@canaccord.com.
If you would like to receive the Late Edition, just e-mail Debbie at debbie_lewis@canaccord.com |
