Copper ‘Muscles’ In The Congo

IVANHOE MINES, our largest and longest held 
nat-resources stake here at home, notched
all of the physical copper tonnages, financial 
targets, and its light-carbon energy and community 
goals for the accelerating DRC Congo 
& South Africa mining centers.

Ivanhoe’s Western Foreland Christmas Gift Might Be Forthcoming

Ivanhoe’s quarterly headline figures of profits, positive cash flows, copper sales and reducing expenses from Kamoa-Kakula add to fourth largest copper producer’s thus far unbroken string of growth.

[See figures, tables, guidance and pointers to a third DRC Congo copper concentrator two-thirds complete, and a rail line to an Angola shipping port, one that will run directly over the Kamoa-Kakula neighboring and coveted Western Foreland copper expanse; and the $380 million Kipushi Mine zinc, silver, copper rehab under way — here please.]

As or more importantly to investors and mining professionals are the contextual indicators of coming copper exploration and other capital events in Ivanhoe‘s near future, some likely before year end. IVN IVPAF

For those, you must turn to the 64-minute call the company’s execs staged this Monday morning. By my listening standards, Ivanhoe’s founder and his team engineered what will be remembered as a breakthrough hour for their shareholders, their workers, political leaders, for commodity trading houses and for customers.

As our TCRs are an investing audience, I shall lay low on the embellishment. The purpose of this report is to show ordinary investors, as in you and me, and profoundly NOT bank researchers, large funds and market traders, why the $16 billion Ivanhoe is, I believe, on its way to $35 billion (equity + debt) market worth by 2025.

That will happen with or without further copper price gains, and gains as well for nickel, platinum, palladium, zinc, silver and other metals Ivanhoe produces or is set to produce in Congo Copperbelt and at Platreef in South Africa.

[Also, see please separate uranium note at the close.]

Comments from Ivanhoe founder Robert Friedland this morning (7:30 am Pacific time) I think will sketch a milieu for current and possible Ivanhoe investors. Namely:

“There is nothing to compare to the DRC … these are not porphyry copper; they are sedimentary copper, akin t oilfields ,,, it goes and goes and goes.”
Platinum-palladium-etc — “We will be a high margin producer (at Platreef). There clearly are a lot of producers feeling pain in the (platinum-group metals) sector … under water … a contraction coming. It’s a problem for other companies … it is a benefit for humanity.”
“We have a uniquely high endowment in nickel … our Mokopane feeder … our nickel sulfides (at Platreef and adjacent Mokpane in South Africa) are one of the largest (holdings) in the world.”
“We are being quite ambitious in several projects at the same time.” (Kamoa-Kakula 1 & 2, Western Foreland extreme-grade copper targets at Makoko-Kiala, Kipushi zinc-silver mine and Platreef nickel-platinum-gold-etc looming mine.)

Ongoing concentrator-smelter work, the third processing facility at Ivanhoe’s Kamoa-Kakula complex
“(We suffer) the tyranny of the NPV model (net-present-value banking formula of discounting the value of assets into the future) … some banks discount … how can they?”

Robert Friedland in recent months has slashed at banks that install 8%, 10% discount rates to projects, or existing mines. “The only discount rate that makes sense for this asset (Kamoa-Kakula copper mine) is zero,” he said earlier this 2023 year.

Félix Tshisekedi, and Marna Koete at Kamoa school that had its first enrolled class in September 2023

‘The largest mining companies in the world are throwing out NPV models. They should be burned. The Congo deserves a premium, not a discount.” See earlier The Calandra Report/TCR report please.

[Note: I remember when he essentially said the same thing about his efforts at Ivanhoe Mongolia and its copper-gold Oyu Tolgoi, since sold for many billions and in development. That was 20 years ago.

In answer to one question of concern from a Bank of America analyst about December presidential elections and some 24 candidates, including current President Félix Tshisekedi, an Ivanhoe joint venture stakeholder on behalf of government, the chairman-founder responded, “I think the election you want to worry about is the one in the United States.”

Ivanhoe President Marna Kloete forecast “it will be a peaceful election … some are (striving) for their political survival.”

TCRs, the greatest interest I believe will be the execs’ heralding of a mineral resource to come before Christmas for targets at Western Foreland. “We have (for Western Foreland) Japanese interest … interest from wealth funds in the Middle East. I don’t think we have gotten to 1 percent of it.”

There is much more in the call and the press release for the third quarter, what with nearly all of its year-ago and sequential metrics showing steady and in some cases leaping gains.

As for the company’s goal of dominating clean energy, Ivanhoe realistically will be the world’s largest “green” copper producer come 2026 or 2027. This largely is a benefit of the Phase 3 concentrator-smelter project at Kamoa-Kipushi that will produce 99%-plus pure blister anode copper. Some 2,000 construction workers are toiling there now, a number to grow to 3,000 in February 2024.

My simple takeaway: Ivanhoe is frequently referred to as a copper company. Yet I accept the company’s belief that with the production to come from Platreef and Mokopane, it will mark itself as one of the largest precious metals producers in the world.

More on the hydropower grid in DRC Congo and the uninterrupted power from South Africa’s ESCOM in the conference call replay. Also, tidbits about forgotten Kipushi and Platreef metals gallium, germanium and rhodium.

“Our local Congolese are very keen to build their own country. This kind of thing is not captured in NPV models or in spreadsheets; it is captured in flesh and blood,” the founder said today-Monday.

I suggest also a scan of the video update for those that want to see the construction, production, exploration, and, close to my English-teaching-journalism career, the opening of the one-year programs for Congolese. The Centre for Excellence at Kamoa-Kakula (see photo please) has modules in English language, computational thinking, creative problem solving, basic financial literacy, workplace ethics, introduction to mining, project management and entrepreneurship development.

The new Centre at Kamoa-Kakula has its first 39 students.

We await Wyoming drilling exploration results 
from Nuclear Fuels NF URVNF, an obscure, 
sub-$20 million enterprise that is part-owned 
by serial start-upper and considerable uranium, 
gold and hard-asset investor Bill Sheriff 
and his Texas looming uranium producer, 
enCore Energy EU. Michael Collins, a 
The Calandra Report/TCR subscriber, and longtime 
TCR'er Bill, are CEO and chairman, respectively. 
NF has something like a 26-mile tract of concessions 
along Wyoming's Powder River Basin. I hope to see 
some assays from the rotary drilling this week.
I tripled my stake in URVNF this week. 
As a uranium explorer, NF is at the extreme end of the risk spectrum.

— Thom Calandra

PayPal $229 Yearly Non-Recurring The Calandra Report

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Thom Calandra is a writer and an investor. Research and material are meant as editorial opinion. He is not a professional investment adviser. Please do not consider his reporting as a recommendation to buy or sell securities.