₪ David Pescod's Late Edition October 29, 2007
KETTLE RIVER RES. (V-KRR) $0.35 +0.01
ARGENTA OIL & GAS (V-AZA) $0.53 -0.05
He’s an affable guy, but as a stock picker (at least with our history) the Midas-touch is missing. We are referring to Joe Martin and if you are into junior mining stories you have probably gone to one of his Cambridge House shows. If not, you probably should. The next few are Vancouver: January 20-21, 2008; Phoenix: February 9-10, 2008 and Calgary: April 12-13, 2008.
You wander around the convention visiting the booths and ask your own questions of the 250 or so junior mining companies, listen to the talks of the letter-writers of the day and some of the analysts give their own lectures (more analysts Joe, please) and it’s usually an overall enjoyable experience.
And then there is Joe! At the centre of all this, with access to any of the analysts he wants to talk to, any broker anywhere in the country and any newsletter writer. So how come after a few of shows of the last few years at the “Speakers Dinner” when Joe and others pick the one stock they figure will do the best over the next six to 12 months, Joe is almost always the one you don’t want to follow.
Several of his picks have been so bad that last January after his Vancouver show we were all set to short whatever it was he picked. Thankfully we didn’t. Oriental Minerals (OTL) was a zinc play in Korea that had been a previously small underground miner and based on additional drilling, they had hoped to make it much bigger. The stock actually doubled and almost tripled with a bit of a promotion and then of course reality hit and results weren’t quite what was hoped for and the “Martin Magic” resumed its course.
Which gets us to the past show in Toronto of this previous weekend and at the Speakers Dinner, once again, we get to picking stocks. The rules are simple—a stock—no warrants or options—best pick over the next 12 months and it must be over $0.50.
So right away Joe picks Kettle River (KRR) which was then at $0.44, which you’ve noticed is already against the rules. But he does pick Kettle River anyway, even if he has to pay $0.50 and the next day it drops!
Which to us is the good news because the bad news was that his second pick would have been Argenta Oil and Gas — the oil and gas junior that Kerry Sully talked about this past Friday, with its high profile stable of oil and gas plays in Latin American and what Sully calls “one of the best management teams ever assembled.”
We own a bunch of Argenta and don’t want the “Martin Magic” to ruin a great story.
BLUE NOTE MINING (V-BN) $0.53 +0.01
How many shares out?
Blue Note Mining is at the phase of life that gets quite interesting as production has started on their Caribou mine in New Brunswick after almost a decade of quietness due to low commodity prices.
We had expected to get ongoing updates on production rates and very importantly...very, very importantly, metallurgical recovery rates of ore. Unfortunately, what we seem to be getting on a regular basis are updates on just how many shares outstanding as they announce yet another financing (why do they need money now?) Which means they now have over 400 million shares outstanding. With zinc and lead prices high, a market cap of $250 million still isn’t that outrageous, but the Canadian dollar is going against them and this mine only has so many years or ore resources.
We are gone before they print any more shares.
ARIZONA STAR RES. (V-AZS) $17.84 +3.14
ANDINA MINERALS (V-ADM) $ 5.20 +0.20
With gold flirting with all time highs and the senior mining companies finding it very difficult to replace the gold that they've already mined, the takeover game is up and running again.
It had been quite buoyant over the last two years until we saw the recent market correction, but it looks like once again, things are rolling along nicely. Just a week ago we published a list of companies that some of the Canaccord analysts think are potential takeover candidates, but the chart and volume on Andina Minerals tells you that there's many that think it may be one of the next targets.
It recently published some new reserve numbers that showed a big increase and any day now we should get some metallurgical numbers to show just how much gold they can get out of the ground on their Volcan Project down in Chile. This is a very high elevation project that tends to be low grade, but others in the area such as Meridian seem to be making a lot of money mining it.
We have also been trying to catch up with Carl Hansen, we had imagined him climbing the Andes looking for new targets or looking at the gold project or even going through the jungles looking for ever new projects.
But it turns out Hansen has been injured in a pick up hockey game and hence why we couldn’t get anymore comments from him. Since then we've gotten several emails from those who know him, just questioning those hockey abilities and whether he learned it from the jungles of Peru or on a Canadian hockey rink.
For those who would like to get some background pieces and research on Andina, once again contact Jenn at Jennifer_Lagdamen@canaccord.com. |
