A Scrum For Mining Investors: Too Many Good & A Few ‘Untouchable‘ Choices
TCRs, I go to the heavyweight nat-resource investment conferences, Beaver Creek, Denver Gold Forum, both in COLORADO; Zürich confabs, one or two others, to stay fresh re: miners/explorers/roy-cos/developers whom I believe could outpace the HOI-POLLOI when metals prices go ballistic. -- Thom
These investor meetings are a scrum: execs and their attendants running around with their heads cut off, looking for other people’s money.
No fun being stopped every 20 minutes, or interrupted.
The mountain or seaside or lakeside settings usually are four-star and five star that tease yet leave zero time for massages, steam rooms, sight-seeing.
Beaver Creek’s Precious Metals Summit had 1,300 registrants, companies and investors, a record or near-record, founder Jessica Levental tells me.
Several of the 130 or so companies there (Snowline Gold, enCore Energy, EMX ROYALTY, Osino Mining for instance) booked as many as 60 one-on-one sessions with investors or potential partners.
I keep my card relatively light for four days: more than 30 total and I get Dianne Feinstein short-term memory blanks.
On behalf of The Calandra Report/TCR subscribers and our home portfolio, I believe like a banshee that I own and-or track the metals-cos that have the best shot at rising the most when gold, nickel, copper, platinum-etc. spark-plug for a 2-year-to-5-year boom.
Once in a great while these days, knowing I have pared the untouchables and have extra cash or held profits from longstanding stakes (Ivanhoe Mines, EMX ROYALTY, a scant few others), I look for well-timed additions to existing stakes … and occasionally, as seen this week and last, a new name or a familiar one; i.e. Laramide Resources LAM (uranium) and CanAlaska Uranium CVV. See TCR coverage please.
When asked by my companion the other day, mining engineer and CEO in his own right, Sandy McVey *, which two or three are tops based on those 30 or so 1-on-one exec-verbatims, I waver. Such an unfair query.
You can parse my choices this week based on the immediate, ASAP purchases I have been making. See: Immediate Standouts I & ASAP II.
IMMEDIATE: I added more of standout EMX Royalty EMX this week and last (a years-long holding) after hearing in the Rocky Mountain setting Dave Cole’s intimation (see my video about Hardshell NSR at Nevada’s Peake) of a small dividend soon … and digesting the approx. $30 million yearly and growing of roy-co revenue coming in the door.
EMX Royalty EMX as noted here before and now more than ever at this price of less than $2 USD a share, is a legacy (think your kids, grandkids) hold for investors looking for a flow of royalty income from metals projects worldwide. The Colorado-based geologic-technical team is well above the 250-mark in generated (organic) NSRs (net-smelter returns) and outright purchases — gold, copper, nickel, silver, cobalt, etc. EMX covers all the geographic and metallic bases.
[It is my third-longest holding after Ivanhoe Mines IVN IVPAF and Xtra-Gold XTG XTGRF, those two in Africa.]
Excerpts of exec-verbatim from Dave Cole:
“We have generational properties in Serviam in Chile, in Nevada, maybe in Arizona (Peake). We have $30 million a year coming in the door. We have Franco-Nevada getting a piece of our micro-financing deck where we buy royalties for small amounts of cash, from companies. our team finds. Some of those companies and their properties are practically unknown to large royalty operators like Franco-Nevada FNV. I mean, most of those deals are or will be sub-$10 million; so too small for FNV to search for.”
Dave is, as you can see from the vids linked below, mostly strident about his beliefs. He has taken heat from investors who question why he quotes deadlines for negotiations (Malmyzh in Russia; Zijin in Serbia for two), then come in with the goods, but maybe months or more after his investors had hoped.
Oh well; so far Dave Cole’s score is almost perfect; next timeline, he. tells me, is a small dividend by year-end or early next year. A dividend will make it easier for the young fund managers at money shops such as Fidelity Investments to explain to their supes why they want an EMX stake in their headline mutual funds.
“The best thing is to grow, grow, grow this portfolio of royalties, as we have for 20 years. Oh yeah, tax-loss selling at year-end? Just around the corner, and most everyone’d stock will take it on the chin. Good to,e top load up — in December,” Dave says.
Collateral: Video link of Dave Cole and the “pyramid monster bottom” at thomcalandra.com and at YouTube:
Zijin and EMX at Timok in Serbia — here at The Calandra Report/TCR.
[Boiler plate: Exploration drilling by South32 at the Nevada Peake prospect returned mineralized intercepts, covered by EMX’s Hardshell royalty,with a copper intercept of 139 meters averaging 1.88% copper, 0.51% lead, 0.34% zinc, and 52 grams a metric ton silver. EMX release: drill results, financials Q@ 2023.]
More to come — my exec-verbatim in personal discussions with Heye Daun at Osino Resources OSI; Jean-Marc Lulin at Azimut Exploration AZM; several others at the Rockies’ metals summit.
Notes
I will be chatting Thursday with Bill Sheriff of soon-to-be U.S.uranium producer enCore Energy EU (Uranium). The 15-minute video from the Rockies is a must. E
Everyone wants to talk to Bill because his enCore is en fuego yet still, the miner-dealmaker says, in ACT I.
FYI: Bill also chairs Nuclear Fuels NF, a speculative explorer for uranium in Wyoming’s Powder River Basin. Nuclear Fuels, a new-co, also is looking in Arizona; enCore Energy owns 20% of it.
The ‘untouchables’ are tagged here in Cache I Colorado. Also in Cache II Colorado.
Great quote from Yukon Casino Project operator Western Copper & Gold‘s Paul West-Sells: “Copper is caught between two cycles, hence the tug of price war. The China-news pulling it down (and sideways), and the electrification, EV and climate news pulling it up.” WRN Thanks, Dr. Paul W-S.
Most of the 15-minute video wraps, some stellar and others a drag, from Precious Metals Summit’s Rocky Mountain gathering, are here day by day. The best ones [see: Marc Henderson’s Laramide; Bill Sheriff’s enCore; Dave Cole’s EMX; Heye Daun’s Osino; Brandon MacDonald’s Fireweed Metals; Ewan Downie’s i-80 Gold] do more than just give the blow-by-blow on why their asset is world class (the usual vamp-hyperbole). Instead; the worthy 15-minute briefs explain, say, Nevada mining; or critical elements in Yukon; or financing in Namibia; or the three-year uranium rally and accompanying metrics.
* Sandy McVey runs West Vault Mining WVM in Nevada’s Tonopah Mining District (silver, gold, lithium). I own the shares and have seen the gold resource there 3 times.
Hasta la vista, John Adams
John, a miner, rancher, preservationist, was 76 when he died in August.
John Adams was a Flying Diamond. That is the name of his Colorado ranch.
See: https://www.steamboatpilot.com/news/obituaries/obituary-john-r-adams/
Miner, rancher, skier, preservationist, Dad, husband and sports fan, John, and his family, introduced me to Steamboat Springs.
John was a model rancher and curator of the finest beef cattle.
A miner, too, as was his father — in coal and uranium here out west.
I met John first in Guyana at his Sandspring Resources, forging his own gold doré, burners blazing and in shorts and a t-shirt.
Toroparu mine is now on its way to becoming a full fledged copper and gold mine.
John was spirited; so is his family, including my friend Wes Adams.
Hasta la vista, John.
— 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.