Osino Resources just got bought out -- by Dundee Precious Metals.
M&A Is Engaged — For Genuine Mine Developers
Heye Daun‘s Osino Resources OSI OSIIF is our win of December, getting taken out by Dundee Precious Metals.
Osino is developing Twin Hills, a Namibia gold project. The Dundee purchase illustrates larger companies’ desire to take on gold and other metal projects two or three years from production.
“Are you happy as a shareholder?” the CEO-mining engineer asks me. [We have owned OSI for three years.]
Why, yes, I am.
It's a $287 million CAD
transaction, half Dundee
cash and half
Dundee DPM shares.
The 'premium' to average
OSI stock value is about 37%.
See Osino-Dundee release here please.
Also, see Sept. 26, 2023, The Calandra Report/TCR, when Heye told us st Beaver Creek Precious Metals Summit, “For M&A to move up, the whole market needs to move up.”
The gold price this winter appears to be doing that.
Heye Daun appears to have hit a hot-spot. Larger companies are starting to snag genuine project developers that arranged equity, credit line and debt financings, as Osino did this autumn 2023. That played a part, Heye says. He has been at Osino’s development as a company for eight years now.
Heye spent at least the past three years “de-risking” Twin Hills in the central part of Namibia. His thesis this year: de-risking Twin Hills’ 2.7 million ounces of measured and indicated gold for potential buyers, then waiting for the gold price to sustain higher levels. Want to see what de-risking involves? See the steps here please.
Dundee Precious Metals ($1.8 billion market value) operates a “complex” copper concentrate smelter in Namibia. The smelter had little to do with Dundee’s decision, Heye said. It processes ore from Bulgaria.
Heye will work to “close” the transaction, then take time off. “I have no desire to sit on a board right now,” the 49-year-old mining engineer says.
Developer Candidates
Other developers, genuine ones, that are in our The Calandra Report fold: Western Copper & Gold WRN in Yukon (just bought more); West Vault Mining WVM WVMDF in Nevada; Xtra-Gold XTG XTGRF in Ghana (just bought more); Banyan Gold BYN BYGAF in Yukon; Anglogold Ashanti-backed G2 Goldfields GTWO GUYGF in Guyana (have not purchased it yet; shares up neatly Tuesday in wake of Anglogold Ashanti investment.)
Coppernico
I have time for Ivan Bebek. Some 11 years ago, maybe 12, on a visit to Xtra-Gold’s Kibi Gold Belt properties, Ivan suggested I take a day or two to see Keegan in Ghana, where PhD. geologist, Dan McCoy, wearing his CEO hat, showed me, on a rugged tour, everything he knew about Keegan’s Esaase — now Galiano Gold‘s GAU four-pen-pit mine in a joint venture with Goldfields.
Coppernico is Ivan’s new thing, owner of Sombrero, a skarn-market cluster of targets-in southern Peru near the well known Las Bambas deposit, which I have seen.
Ivan, a Canadian capital markets guy living outside Phoenix, Arizona, with his family, threw me some compelling observations the other day. He co-founded Auryn Resources, which with Ivan’s money and direction spun out Canadian gold and silver assets at James Bay, and at Nunavut, Québec, into Fury Gold FURY.
(Ivan says Fury’s gold project Committee Bay, way up north there in Nunavut, might be getting attention soon.)
“I started my career hearing my Dad tell stories about (Robert) Friedland,” Ivan remembers. “So I know how to swing big.”
“The copper deficit has been with us for 10 years, and it takes 25 years to get a mine into production,” Ivan, 46, says. (I own copper miner Ivanhoe Mines IVN IVPAF and copper developer Western Copper & Gold, whose shares I added to today-Tuesday Dec. 19, 2023).
His thesis, of course, is that “we have the next Las Bambas” with Sombrero.
Maritime
Yemen rebels, the Houthis, have been attacking Red Sea lane shippers this month. Friday, shares of maritime crude oil and liquid nat-gas carriers mostly rose 5 % to 7% — DHT Maritime Holdings DHT 7%. The largest so-called very-large crude carriers, VLCCs, include Teekay Corp., Euronav NV, Scorpio Tankers, Frontline Ltd. and DHT. The attacks probably will boost spot leasing rates, which are volatile these days. Oil prices also are gaining as word spreads of the attacks. Five shippers say they have stopped using the Red Sea.
Please see earlier The Calandra Report/TCR regarding this.
Here is an update from The Guardian in London, worth a read: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/dec/17/us-to-announce-expanded-protection-force-for-red-sea-shipping.
We own DHT shares and have for more than a year.
— Thom Calandra
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.