Some post conference comments after Aurcana's 9/10 presentation @ Schiff's Euro Pacific Resource Conference....
Schiff's event in NYC yesterday and Aurcana
Today at 06:44 AM (Sept. 11,2013)
When I first signed up for the Euro-Pacific Event there was no agenda, I really wanted to meet Peter Schiff and thank him for all he does to wake people the F up.
During the event, I ran into Max Keiser from RT TV who is a friend of Peter it turns out, so I ended up tipping a few with Max, Peter and Peter's brother Larry. Larry was great too. Had a lot of fun. Max is sooo nuts. Loved it. Hung with them for over an hour before and during drinks discussing all sorts of stuff (like whether the Russians try to censor Keiser on certain topics, Syria, Keiser's software company and his virtual futures bidding system. All sorts of stories, I had a few too. Turns out Max wants to interview my brother once his news hits - and it will be big, global news. More on that when the news finally breaks. I am going to try and broker that interview with Max and maybe get a trip to London out of it. We will see.)
But it turned out to be a pretty good line up of Junior's and a senior or two.
Aurcana, Pretium Brigus, Endeavor, Silvercrest and several other potentially interesting stocks.
Here is a quick review of Aurcana (AUN.V ~ AUNFF) from yesterday's Euro-Pac meeting in NYC
Aurcana story was the same as we heard on the CC. Catalin (IR) gave the presentation. He did pretty good. I cornered him afterward and grilled him for about 10-15 minutes.
The $50M finance deal is still not fully completed – it is with the lawyers according to him. He liked the deal if they could get it closed. It includes a 3yr paid back with interest and Red Kite gets some sort of purchase arrangement based on spot for some period.
It sounded good because it was not a streaming deal per se. Red Kite will get to pick their purchase price every month calculated over a brief pricing window – something like this.
They still have $13M of capex to buy for Shafter using the money the rest of the money will be for ramp and a to reestablish a cash cushion for the company.
Grades are great at Shafter. They are getting 600 t/d and processing 600 t/p but without the additional press and fully upgraded mill their recovery is only ~50%. They expect to reprocess the tailings later once the mill is fully complete.
He said Lenic made the mistake of trusting his people on the design. They have all been fired and a new more seasoned vet is in. I said why didn't Lenic get reamed? He said Lenic got his – apparently Lenic bought $50m (I think that is what I heard) at what is now $10 per share basis (or something like this) - the long and the short, Lenic has big money is in the game and he is way underwater so he is bound and determined to get this fixed - on top of the fact that it is his job. Pain in the wallet never hurts as a motivator.
The best news was that the Au in that La Negra vein has been found at the top and lower down in the vein. The issue of how fast they mine it has to do with the grade of the Au in the concentrate. Apparently, below 2g/t and the dealers in concentrates won't pay much for it in terms of its real real worth. Why, wasn't clear. (I assume some cost of processing issues but I honestly don't know. Per Catalin and beyond this he wasn't clear either as to why. I bet cost because they all do it, even though as he notes - they operate like a cartel. )
AUN has some more drill results for LN destined for a re-release soon (no time line but before next year) and he said next year they would decide how to expand work on LN. The reserves are so huge they need to decide where, when, when etc. to approach it. (In the past, Lenic said they were out of room to expand the mill any further on the current site so any expansion may include issues of a new mill placement with respect to the ore body.)
Apparently, some of the new veins they have discovered at LN have much high grades further up in the veins so they have some sort of cavity drill (or machine) that will bore way up into the vein and mine it from up in the vein. Never heard of this before. I will follow up on that one.
Bottomline – the ore is there and they are working to get at it. The financing will help and they are working a Plan b if RK fails. Hopefully, the good news (hopefully), that by the time they get Shafter up and tuned up (1Q or 2Q 2014 with finance say this Q), the metal prices will be better. (Similar to GORO.) This was my hope – Catalin never mentioned it but agreed when I said it.
Oh yes, they still finding varying traces Au in every Dore bar they pour at Shafter. Hmmm! Not sure if the smelter's will pay for it as was mentioned with LN. But I think Dore is different than concentrates as with LN. It would be nice to hear more here because the first two Dore ingots had 6% and 11% Au if I recall correctly. And that is way more than the 2% cut-off with the concentrates.
http://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/Metalmoney/conversations/messages/1641
Dan  |
