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Gold/Mining/Energy : SOUTHERNERA (t.SUF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Shaw who wrote (4321)	8/13/1999 5:45:00 PM
From: russet	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 7235

I hear you Dean, but every company makes mistakes. You have pointed some out. I agree with them. I'm not sure we can say they stink administratively based on these mistakes. I don't think I could have predicted many of their mistakes, and I probably would have stumbled into them, and a few more too, even with all their experience. Their ability to get off their pitards, dust themselves off, and get on with it has been ignored though. I just added up Winspears promotional and shareholder info costs for 1998 and the last quarter. In 1998 they spent about $330,000 but some related costs may be expensed in travel, telephone costs, salaries and perhaps some other areas like consulting. In the first quarter of 1999 these costs are about $177,000 and again some related costs may be expensed in other accounts. A lot of Randy Turner's time is spent on this activity. I think he makes $200,000 now. Winspear may spend well over $500,000 a year on this, plus the time of other key personnel, and the rate of burn for this activity appears to be increasing. Even with all this expense, the stock fell out of bed after disappointing the high expectations of the market last month. How many years until they start mining? Dia Met took about 5 years at the same stage of development. SUF spends their time on mining and exploration, and much to all our surprise, the stock falls out of bed too. But analysts are focused on the near term earnings, therefore are only looking at M1. I think there is an analyst in every big brokerage house that is suppose to analyze SUF, and they have the same numbers we have,...but they chose to ignore the obvious extrapolations. If management presented them, as I do on this thread, and something fell through, SUF would get sued. Lawsuits cost a lot of time and money and should be avoided at all costs. SUF has to present a conservative view on the future. They have good legal advice to do so I think. Doesn't help the share price unfortunately. I think management is doing their jobs. Promotion will only give short term gains. In the long run we are back to needing Messina and future discoveries on Marsfontein, Klipspringer and/or elsewhere or we go back to being a sub $1.00 stock. That's the risk we all take now. This is still a spec play. To managements credit, they got M1 into production in a little over a year, on time and on budget. That was good management. They could get Messina into production in two years. Compare that with the time line of other mining projects like Ekati or Diavik or Camsell Lake. Perhaps we are just asking the impossible, particularly in this market environment that has a hate on almost all junior mining exploration companies. It is a show me the earnings market. You are damned if you incur costs exploring and buying new property, and damned if you don't. I believe in management's ability to bring on more projects in SAf and increase share value. I'm willing to give them a year to prove their convictions. That won't support the share price, and shouldn't give anyone much consolation, maybe I'm being duped, who knows? Confluence asked for some calculations and I posted mine. I suggest everyone do the same before selling to the bid next week. I don't think too many people could have done what Jennings and company have done under the same circumstances in the same amount of time. Well that's a lot of hot air up above, eh??(ggggg) russett is fed up, time for a beer. I love you all!!