New Cat at Seven; Canadian flow-through; Meridian’s good ratings; change in the Citi
March 9 - 15, 2010
THERE’S something big and yellow coming up on Kerry Stokes’ Channel Seven, and it’s not Fat Cat or any other Cat we’ve come to know (lately).
Golden Corvette; Minara malice; Petra the pick
March 2 - 8, 2010
NEW Corvette Resources boss Jason Bontempo has been taking a leaf out of the playbook of master spruiker and incoming Corvette chairman Tony Sage.
A word or three about nickel; mine opening is 'Gold'; Kagara's open book; Avoca closes in
February 9 - 15, 2010
TIME for contrarians to start thinking nickel? We’d probably be the least capable clowns on planet earth to make this call, but certainly Australia stocks in the sector have been given a right royal thrashing over the past six months.
Parker a gold pour groupie
February 2 - 8, 2010
At last week’s first gold pour, Saracen Minerals attributed some of its recent success in getting the Carosue Dam project up and running to the efforts of non-executive director Barrie Parker.
GBF Mining; Avatar gives Albanese's vision the flick; FMG gets clumpy
January 26 - February 1, 2010
HAS the soft underside of a venerable Kambalda institution been exposed? That’s a question being asked of GBF Mining after the contractor lost out in a mining contract bidding duel to an ‘outsider’ for the first time in 20 years.
Rio de numero uno ...
December 21 - 27, 2009
RIO Tinto got an absolute shellacking from just about everybody for the Alcan and Chinalco debacles but is it BHP Billiton’s time to take its turn in the stocks as the village idiot, and might in fact Rio yet end up as the top dog (wrong pun) in the resources world?
No more iron awe; why didn't BHP fix it?
December 14 - 20, 2009
NO DOUBT they will change their tune next week, but the current thinking from the likes of Citi and Goldman Sachs JBWere (GSJBW) isn’t overly positive on the longer term prospects for iron ore producers.
Law (now] supports game Mantra; time to turn away from Medusa?
November 23 - 29, 2009
RUMOURS of good news for Mantra Resources will perhaps reassure those that hopped aboard lately on this runaway train of a uranium stock.
What's Toyota driving at? Sandfire caught speeding ...
November 2 - 8, 2009
A COLUMN in British newspaper The Telegraph early this week arguing Japan is on its last legs may have elicited some interest from lithium and vanadium players.
Rio Tinto, BHPB, Crescent Gold, Redstone Resources
October 12 - 18, 2009
WHILE Rio Tinto took more flack for the Alcan deal than James Packer got this week for his Nevada casino deals, BHP seems to have given the underlying strategy behind the deal a big tick.
OceanaGold, Glengarry, Avoca, Rex, Intrepid, Rio Tinto
October 5 - 11, 2009
WHAT are the odds that New Zealand gold miner cum Philippines gold-copper hopeful OceanaGold is working overtime trying desperately to attract a strong suitor?
Westgold; Sphere
September 14 - 20, 2009
TENNANT Creek explorer Westgold and the late, great (sometimes) MIM Holdings don’t on the surface seem to have too much in common. But look a little deeper, so to speak, and you can find a connection if you work hard enough.
Flying in style; flying saucers; high-flying Canadian
September 7 - 13, 2009
WARWICK Grigor has downed bagpipes, and pulled out the safari suit and pith helmet for a traipse around West Africa this week with a bunch of funds and investment types keen to get the inside word on listed equity opportunities in West Africa.
Hole in the iron zone; moly madness; Extract
August 31 - September 6, 2009
TALK to the Chinese about metal prices and chances are you may hear a good whinge about how badly they’ve been treated by the Yang Guizi (“foreign devils” in Mandarin), and in particular by those nasty Australians – excluding Twiggy of course! However. that assessment is mostly bunkum, as the iron statistics show.
Territory Resources, Ausdrill-Brandrill, Twiggy, Aust Mines, Rox
August 17 - 23, 2009
EXPLORATION drilling results from Territory Resources’ Frances Creek East ground could provide a double tonic for investors if the company also succeeds in gaining better control of its balance sheet.
Newcrest, Bannerman
August 10 - 16, 2009
FOR all the kudos that regularly head both Newcrest Mining and CEO Ian Smith’s way, the fact of the matter is that if you are an investor rather than a trader or a dirt mover/rock kicker (or a CEO) in Newcrest’s lucrative employ, then 2009 has thus far been nothing to write home about.
Something Xstrata; on Sandfire
July 27 - August 2, 2009
EXCO has strengthened its case for providing copper-gold ore to Xstrata’s declining Ernest Henry mine next door in the Cloncurry region of Queensland, and if one was a punter, what price something happening one way or the other before the year is out?
Mincor, Jabiru, Mantra, Proto, Spitfire
July 20 - 26, 2009
KUDOS to Mincor Resources and Jabiru Mines, both of whom delivered strong operational performance in the June quarter.
FMG not looking back; good enough for Dattels
July 13 - 19, 2009
AFTER being a no-name junior in 2003 nobody could argue that Fortescue Metals Group has made an absolutely tremendous effort in becoming a significant iron ore producer in 2009, but its “success” to date cannot disguise what it seems is a far from uncommon flaw in the publicly listed domain.
Teck attack; Panoramic's vision; Mac flak; Sudbury sustainability; Troy Resources
July 6 - 12, 2009
CALL us crazy paranoid nationalistic conspiratorial bastards, (aka complete nutters), but we can’t help spotting another Chinese deal involving a resources heavyweight, and this time in a country plush with grassy knolls.
Sandfire, Corvette, Spitfire, Paladin, Centamin
June 29 - July 5, 2009
STAND by for a trading halt and significant equity raising by Sandfire Resources. For as surely as ducks follow those with the bread, Karl Simich and crew at Sandfire will soon be jauntily walking out the door of some stockbroker or other with some extra hard-earned in their back pocket.
Glencore IPO; Kagara raising
June 22 - 28, 2009
IVAN Glasenberg, the CEO of Glencore, being civil and answering questions from outsiders about his business in a transparent and accommodating manner? GMAFB! Reports Glencore is considering an IPO has got to be one of the more speculative bits of speculation to come out of the England in living memory.
Minmetals; Zambezi; in the field; Panoramic view
June 15 - 21, 2009
IT MUST be like having a bad experience after buying a second hand car in a private sale … you hand over the readies, get the keys, start driving down the street and the bloody thing breaks down before you get to the first corner. Well that’s exactly how it may have felt to Minmetals.
Shared vision? Central Norseman comeback
June 1 - 7, 2009
SHARING the vision could be BHP Billiton and Rio Tinto’s new theme for the Pilbara, but it is known the two companies have a dissimilar view on one element of the latter’s strategy for its iron ore mines.
Prominent opening
May 18 - 24, 2009
DESPITE Oxiana’s Sepon history and mining tentatively moving positively into mainstream culture via the ABC’s recent drama Dirt Game, celebrities were as thick on the ground as trees at the opening of the Prominent Hill mine in South Australia on the weekend.
Apex raising; Equinox; Mundoro's slow boat in China
May 11 - 17, 2009
APEX Minerals is now set to pass the $A200 million mark in terms of monies raised for its Wiluna gold project in Western Australia. Which sounds like a fair bit of dough for a refurbished gold project yielding 120,000oz per annum.
Straits down to business; Prominent question; Vedanta power
April 27 - May 3, 2009
MOST talk the talk, far fewer walk the walk. We’re talking about M&A, and the laughable number of execs, particularly at the junior end, parroting the nonsense that their strong cash position (anything over about $3-4 million will suffice apparently), means they are looking at “opportunities”.
St Barbara gloom, Boart ... and sold
April 20 - 26, 2009
CLEARLY we were in a delusional frame of mind last week when we indicated that St Barbara could start to pleasantly surprise on the performance front. What were we thinking?
Tennant Creek, Corporate Games, nickel news
April 13 - 19, 2009
THE share market gains weren’t overly spectacular – Emmerson Resources aside – but the boards and management of juniors active in the Tennant Creek would have got a great deal of encouragement this week with the arrival in their neck of the woods of the redoubtable Robert Friedland.
Regis, Kingsgate, PanAust
April 6 - 12, 2009
CALL us completely naïve but there is probably one surefire thing the good old boys trying to replace the board at gold contender Regis Resources could do to prove they’re the ones for the job. And it’s the same for most other board-spill situations.
SA vs WA, hedging, commodity switching, Bass, ‘bossnapping’
March 30 - April 5, 2009
PAUL Heithersay, who clocks up more frequent flyer points than Aussie PM Kevin Rudd flogging South Australia’s now universally applauded government-funded exploration initiative, wasn’t taking news of Western Australia’s $A80 million state government strategy to encourage exploration back to the state lying down.
Sphere, Kinross Gold, HudBay, uranium
March 23 - 29, 2009
STILL no luck with Sphere Investment’s Alexander Burns. We just can’t seem to track Sphere’s head honcho down. Anecdotally, our man Alex was last seen stumbling off into the vast Mauritanian desert back in August 2008, shaking his head, muttering something about being double crossed, and looking for all the world like a gaunt, pasty faced side show in a Serge Leone offering from the mid-1960s.
Uranium, Matilda Minerals, Panoramic, AMC Consultants, China gold
March 16 - 22, 2009
KNOCK us over with a feather after uranium explorers/mining wannabes gave both barrels to the Goldman Sachs JBWere’s view of the outlook for the sector. Analyst and company director Warwick Grigor was especially pumped.
CuDeco, Gryphon, Gold M&A, Paladin, Runge, gold no silver lining
March 8 - 14, 2009
WAYNE McCrae keeps buying shares in the controversial copper explorer cum-developer he runs, while Mick Davis got the go ahead from his masters last week in Zug to proceed as planned. Confused? Read on.
Cooked just right
February 23 - March 1, 2009
GOOD thing Australia didn’t keep up the “macro-economic policy activism” of the 1970s, otherwise we’d be in real trouble, right?
Independence/Bonwick, Bendigo/Hanson, Patersons, Borshoff/bankers
February 16 - 22, 2009
ON THE surface it wouldn’t seem to be the greatest time for attending or presenting at an exploration conference featuring the smaller end of the resources sector, but of course for true believers it’s the best time to be getting set for the next upturn.
Indaba, zinc and nickel, Glencore and Western Areas, Peter Joseph and Dominion
February 9 - 15, 2009
THE swim-thru at Cape Town was a tad quieter this year though the presence of sharks and vultures is always a given - it’s just the quantum that varies through the cycle.
Astron, Tianshan, Silver Lake, Bendigo ... aPoligies
February 2 - 8, 2009
THE common view is that while many have tried, there are very, very few white devils, sorry Westerners, who have successfully made a buck in China since the middle kingdom started re-opening its doors in the 1990s. Alexander Wood at Astron is one of that very select group.
Poli vs Vale, Lundin-Hudbay, insider trading, Bendigo, Mirabela, Platinum Aust
January 26 - February 1, 2009
TONY Poli is a veritable dog with a bone when it comes to legal issues involving his junior company and majors, and Vale would presumably be well aware of that as it munches on Poli’s latest legal missive.
Matrix junk sale, fortune tellers, Image Resources, and the open Atlas
January 19 - 25, 2009
THE silly season may have extended into mid-January given the receivers appointed to the sale of the Matrix Metals copper assets, Deloitte, have taken it upon themselves to issue a press release that said interest from potential buyers had been high.
Emerging gold, bigger Bass
December 15 - 21, 2008
AFTER spending most of the boom being the poor cousins of the resources sector, a new wave of Australian gold companies look set to emerge in 2009. Their timing looks bang on.
Western Metals-Western Mining, CopperCo-Glencore-Maccas, Citi’s Chinese chit chat, Atlas Iron
December 1 - 7, 2008
OLD time resource sector investors looking for value opportunities at the junior end of the market could be forgiven for doing a double take when they come across the George Bauk-led Western Metals. Not only is the junior full of ex-Western Mining personnel, it’s got a broadly similar name and a remuneration bill that probably wouldn’t look too out of place in one of the former’s operating divisions.
Tin, Kasbah, Metals X
November 24 - 30, 2008
THE likelihood that hundreds of juniors will have to rattle tins over the next 12 months or so was not of course the reason Argonaut was this week canvassing “peak tin?”
CopperCo, Mark Pervan, Swick Mining, equipment purchasing
November 17 - 23, 2008
BRIAN Rear must wryly shake his head at times like these when he remembers Keith Liddell convincing him a few years back to return full time to the mining industry at the helm of CopperCo.
CEO salaries, HudBay, Golden Star Resources
November 10 - 16, 2008
MOST executives have been a little shy about publicly stating whether or not they plan drastic changes at their company in the wake of the changed world we all now live in.
Alliance focus shifts to yellowcake
November 3 - 9, 2008
THE Australian-dollar gold price and prospects for a better 2009 for gold may be providing the pre-Christmas cheer for some junior companies and investors, but Alliance Resources has decided to hitch its wagon to uranium and shut down its Maldon gold project in Victoria.
FMG, nickel/gold, Centamin, BHPB
October 20 - 26, 2008
FORTESCUE Metals Group has had a good win this week with the authorities vis-à-vis using the established rail lines in the Pilbara region. And rightly so any neutral observer would no doubt have thought. But is talk of the ambitious expansions FMG has planned fair dinkum?
AUD bonanza?; equipment prices
October 6 - 12, 2008
EVEN the most persistent voices of reason are not being heard in the current blizzard of bad news from the world’s stockmarkets and financial centres. They don’t get more persistent – some mining executives would say incessant – than Keith Goode, who was madly waving his arms around this week about the (positive) impact of the Australian dollar on local miners’ revenue streams.
Paladin, Murchison, Ashburton, Mineral Sands, Independence
September 29 - October 5, 2008
WELL the good news for Paladin Energy shareholders is the company has kicked its Langer Heinrich operation into shape, reaching nameplate capacity last quarter. The bad news is, the macro picture for uranium in the short-to-medium term has apparently dimmed somewhat.
Grange Resources, Sino Gold
September 22 - 28, 2008
INVESTORS not happy with the watering down of their share of the $US1.6 billion Southdown magnetite project through Grange Resources’ proposed merger with Australian Bulk Minerals? That could be one reason for the precipitous fall in Grange’s share price since the deal was announced. The company’s chairman and major shareholder Anthony Bohnenn has another idea: Murphy’s Law.
Boart Longyear, golds, Intec
September 15 - 21, 2008
WE could well be wrong here - as per standard journalistic practice - but the Citi analyst has always seemed a tad more sceptical on the prospects for Boart Longyear than most of his/her counterparts. And given Boart’s callow market performance, that scepticism has seemed well placed.
Terramin starts kicking goals
September 8 - 14, 2008
ZINC may not be the metal du jour at the moment but Terramin Australia will likely have been reassured by a couple of events over the past week or so – both at home and abroad.
Boart Longyear, cash backing, Baltic Dry
September 1 - 7, 2008
SELLING shares in your own company has always been a tricky business for directors, and the sale by the incoming CEO of Boart Longyear of half his stake hasn’t impressed the Goldman Sachs JBWere analyst team.
Azure, Mineral Deposits, Exco, Kagara
August 25 - 31, 2008
HEADLINE numbers continue to accumulate for Azure Minerals with narrow drill intercepts of more than 40% copper being made at the company’s Promontorio project in Mexico.
GSJBW falls out of love with gold
August 18 - 24, 2008
PLATINUM has been given big wraps by Brian Gilbertson, while Goldman Sachs JBWere has gone cold on gold just as reports appear that Central Banks will be selling less of the yellow metal in these uncertain economic times.
Operating costs, Minara, tin, Andean
August 11 - 17, 2008
WITH commodity price reversals in train operating costs have come back onto the radar big time in the past few months, and it’ll be interesting to see if the mining industry can improve its transparency in this regard should it be left to prove its bona fides sans screamingly high metal prices.
Minara, Newcrest, Western Areas, optimistic drillers
August 4 - 10, 2008
MINARA Resources continues to live up to the clichéd view of the mining sector held by the critics. Namely a serial destroyer of capital. All of which makes the creeping interest of the smart chaps at Glencore over the years rather curious.
Merrill's gold picks, St Barbara, HudBay, Azumah
July 28 - August 3, 2008
WRONG sport for winter downunder, but the batting order for Australian gold companies has been chosen by Merrill Lynch.
Aditya Birla, Alcoa, oil shale, Kingsgate
July 21 - 27, 2008
WHOA betide investors caught with shares in copper basket case Aditya Birla. Disappointing quarter after disappointing quarter is the sad story of this inappropriately ASX-listed company, with Credit Suisse more or less giving up on the stock this week.
Glengarry, Western Areas, nickel positives, uranium simmers, Boart, Kev
July 14 - 20, 2008
GLENGARRY Resources seems your quintessential Aussie battler of a stock, trudging away in the backblocks of the outback and rarely (very rarely) offering shareholders too much in the way of a win over the past decade or so. However, longshots do come in every now and then and Glengarry working in the Great Sandy Desert is a quinella of blue sky and nothingness.
Independent consultants
July 7 - 13, 2008
THE industry consolidation theme in the mining consulting field has gone out the door, literally, at Downer EDI unit Snowdens in Perth where three of the 21-year-old consulting group’s senior personnel have now departed to form a new small player in the sector.
Gold, Aditya Birla
June 23 - 29, 2008
JUST about every single possible reason for gold to be storming ahead has emerged in recent months, not that you’d know given the performance of equities. Short of nuclear war, it’s difficult to imagine many more things that need to be in favour of the gold price, and by proxy gold equities, though as always with those that make a living from overseeing market transactions, you can be sure they’ll find some reason or other to buy or sell.
Indophil, Kagara, Bass
June 16 - 22, 2008
KUDOS to Richard Laufmann of Indophil Resources. In a business world resplendent with rhetoric, Laufmann has done what very, very few other company directors do – he’s actually put his money where his mouth is. And in the process he’s made a mockery of the likes of Macquarie.
Mantra line still pleases
June 9 - 15, 2008
WHILE no one touches John Borshoff when it comes to making hay from the return-to-uranium theme of recent years, the boys from Mantra Resources, including the very sharp Ian Middlemas, continue to also reap a very tidy harvest indeed.
Reed, Genesis, Carbine, Anvil, nickel doom
June 2 - 8, 2008
NICHOLAS Curtis should know a thing or two about the world of exotic minerals, and his name amongst that always secretive group of faceless “institutional investors” lends Reed Resources’ Barrambie vanadium project in Western Australia an instant deal of credibility.
Centaurus, Magna Mining, Dwyka, Boart Longyear, Saracen
May 26 - June 1, 2008
WHO better to learn from then the master Andrew Twigmiester Forrest? Such seems the case for Richard G Hill, an executive officer at Twiggy’s totally forgettable foray into the gold business earlier this century who has done rather well with a Brazilian focus.
Pioneer, Whinnen, Brockman, Gindalbie, Metals X, and analysts
May 19 - 25, 2008
PIONEER Nickel shareholders will be hoping for a change of luck at their exploration company after nearly five years of fruitless wanderings in the Australian outback.
Gryphon, Mineral Deposits, Breakaway, Cameco
May 12 - 18, 2008
YOU don’t have to be rocket scientist to suspect there could be some fine drilling results coming out of the office of Gryphon Minerals over the course of 2008, with so-called sophisticated investors from Euroz getting set on the ground floor earlier this month.
Bass, Abra, Western Areas, HudBay
May 5 - 11, 2008
IF THE market happens to overlook the good news first time round, there’s no harm in giving it a second chance, according to the team at Tasmanian explorer and miner Bass Metals.
The bird has flown … Heron, Sundance, Murchison, Platinum Australia
April 28 - May 4, 2008
YOU win some, you lose some in the resources caper, and in the case of Heron Resources you can do it almost simultaneously and with panache.
Equinox, Aditya Birla, Terramin, copper
April 21 - 27, 2008
WHILE investors and to a much lesser extent brokers feel the pain of a distressed market, investment bankers and corporate types world-wide seem to be swimming in a sea of transactions and advisory roles.
MetalsX, Ecuador, Kingsgate, Cawse
April 14 - 20, 2008
TIN miners would likely be wearing quite a smile this week with the metal at $US21,500 per tonne and forecasts from a shindig in Hong Kong suggesting it could be on its way further north for all the usual commodity reasons.
Geopolitical copper, Dominion
April 7 - 13, 2008
ANOTHER big copper deposit in a difficult jurisdiction is set to slowly loom onto the horizon as every bit of dirt with even a hint of the red metal in the current pricing regime is dusted off and brought to market.
Kagara, House of Were, Abra, Hunan, Image, Meteoric
March 31 - April 6, 2008
WHILE it is a given that reporters are next-to clueless when it comes to mining, exploration and markets, the analyst world does have the ability to throw up its share of curious pronouncements on occasion. Take the case of Goldman Sachs JBWere and Kagara Zinc, for example.
Turkey slap
March 24 - 30, 2008
TURKEY has reaffirmed its status as one of the more difficult investment destinations for miners with Inmet Mining Corp the latest casualty.
A fraction out, thanks
March 17 - 23, 2008
RELATIONS between the mining industry’s various ‘factions’ – geology, geophysics, geotechnics, mining, metallurgy – can be fractious, but it seems that as long as the orebody at the Angas zinc-silver-lead project in South Australia is where it is supposed to be all will be forgiven over an earlier slip-up by the rock-kickers at Terramin.
New game, same name
March 10 - 16, 2008
JOSHUA Pitt has been around this resources caper a long time. He has no doubt seen them come and go … the good, the bad and the aesthetically challenged.
Bonwick looks to refill golden cup
March 3 - 9, 2008
CHRIS Bonwick has previously spoken of the halcyon days in 1990s working for Resolute Samantha as its Chalice gold project churned out the cash. And so it’s probably no great surprise to find that Independence is one of the bidders for one of the better small gold mines to come on the market in recent years.
AA positive about MMX?
February 25 - March 2, 2008
COULD a return of Anglo American to the Australian iron ore sector be on the cards? Possibly so if you believe a fleeting reference made to MMX in a recent Merrill Lynch ‘big picture’ style report on the global mining sector.
Carrapateena clouds gathering?
February 11 - 17, 2008
RUDI Gomez could be forgiven for wondering if he’s being softened up for a lower ball offer than he might once have expected for his Carrapateena copper-gold find from Teck Cominco after the Canadian major listed a litany of negatives this week from the fourth quarter of 2007.
Downes looks around
February 4 - 10, 2008
CASHED-up Ironbark has raised $A5 million in equity from Standard Bank to expedite development of its Citronen zinc project in Greenland and, apparently, to engage in a bit of M&A.
Damned if you don't
January 21 - 27, 2008
WHAT exactly can the board and management at Perilya Mines do to climb out of the horrendous hole the company has fallen into over the past six months? Damningly for an established miner, the company currently appears to be trading on little more than cash backing.
It's cheap working in Brazil ... just ask Mirabela
January 14 - 20, 2008
YOU got to hand it to those boys from Brazil (via Perth’s salubrious western suburbs). The Mirabela Nickel boys that is; managing director Nick Poll, chairman Bill Clough, and executive director and Verona Capital principal Craig Burton.
Lions on the prowl, sharks circling
December 17 - 23, 2007
LION Selection and XSTRATA have some convincing to do, while KERRY Hamanis starts spending his squillions and the boys at BATAVIA Mining seek their next fortune.
Broker gains strong exposure to Maximus ground
December 10 - 16, 2007
PATERSONS Securities and its blessed clients are the proud new owners of nearly 26 million shares costing $A5.15 million in Maximus Resources. That’s the reward for being underwriters to a $A9.48 million non-renounceable rights issue that attracted $A4.32 million worth of applications.
Pushing but no shovelling
November 26 - December 2, 2007
GUNSON Resources is in a public spat with the Central Land Council (CLC) of Australia, which it accused last week of dragging its heels on a request to explore for uranium as a possible co-mineral to gold and copper at the Tennant Creek project in the Northern Territory.
Heron enjoys threesome
November 19 - 25, 2007
PLAYING the big boy suitors off against each other just beautifully in the past week has been the little bird with the alluring nickel assets, HERON Resources.
Raising the stakes
November 12 - 18, 2007
HERALD Resources is keeping mum about the arrival on its register of Perilya Mines, but the world could soon get an idea how the long-frustrated Michael Wright and Terence Allen feel about the whole affair with the mooted $A100 million equity capital raising being organised by Euroz.
Elephant is a Cat
November 5 - 11, 2007
THE elephant in two rooms in the mining equipment business is about to be revealed as a very large Cat.
Tour de force
October 29 - November 4, 2007
ROBERT Friedland’s corporate jet is yet again racking up the air miles, with the corporate roadshow designed to drum up support for an IPO of Ivanhoe Australia now in North America having already winged its way through Europe and down to the reformed convicts with money in Melbourne and Sydney.