Chaarat Gold Share Discussion Threads

[retirement_fund] 21/5/2018 16:53

Great finds! There certainly seems to be a lot of activity and influencing going on behind the scenes and I am becoming increasingly confident that Chaarat can pull this off. The only worry I have is the lack of formal update from Centerra (since their initial statement that they weren't interested).

[casual47] 21/5/2018 16:26

Not sure if coincidence but the Kumtor Twitter account tweeted the below a couple of hours after the news article that I posted earlier was published. I see from their Twitter "following" that they are following the news outlet which had a link to the article so could be a reaction.

The image is in Russian but it seems a snapshot of what Kumtor is contributing to the Kyrgyz economy. The big number top left is Kyrgyzaltyn's shareholding.

Check out @KumtorKG’s Tweet:

I don't know who owns this Twitter handle but could be Centerra PR.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 14:35

If Chaarat can pull this off and not mess it up down the line then I imagine they will get loads of goodwill from the locals for "bringing home" Kumtor to them. Successive governments talked about it and never delivered. Whatever the rights and wrongs of it the perception that Kumtor was stolen from them, aided and abetted by government officials, has only gained in strength.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 12:01

Note: this agreement was done by the previous administration and was even at the time pretty controversial.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 11:41

Van Eck is the third biggest shareholder of Centerra at around 8.65%. (According to morningstar)

Surely if both Kyrgyzaltyn and Blackrock (together 39%) are in favour of the deal then it is game over for Centerra?

Another thing to keep an eye on: May 31st is a deadline for Centerra to fulfil an agreement with Kyrgyz government:

TORONTO, April 20, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Centerra Gold Inc. (TSX:CG) announced today that it has agreed with the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic to extend the First Longstop Date under the Strategic Agreement for Environmental Protection and Investment Promotion previously entered into with the Government of the Kyrgyz Republic on September 11, 2017. The First Longstop Date is the date by which all conditions precedent to the completion of the Strategic Agreement are required to be satisfied and it has been extended by agreement of the parties from April 20, 2018 to May 31, 2018.

More here:

[pjackson2] 21/5/2018 11:39

Still suspended is a positive
in my opinion.something must
be happening.

[fishhead1] 21/5/2018 10:59

Nice find casual.

Certainly seems that the 'laughable' quotes made earlier might have been made prematurely.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 10:56

The background mood music in Kyrgyzstan meanwhile is lots of politicians from the previous guard, including the previous prime minister and even the former president, are facing potential criminal charges for fraud.

That will make the noises around Kumtor just more militant.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 10:34

The leading shareholders are of course:

State owned Kyrgyzaltyn 26%
Blackrock 12.5%

[jc2706] 21/5/2018 10:31

Interesting. It does indeed suggest that there is more likelihood of this going ahead.

As for a potential Centerra suspension, I am not sure whether this is necessary. It would be on the ASX but they tend to jump if someone just shouts 'BOO'! That said, I am not familiar with TSX rules surrounding this kind of asset purchase.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 10:31

This is from the Telegraph site mentioned:



Google translate:
As it became known from sources that are trustworthy, the leading shareholders of Centerra carefully study the issue of the sale of the Kumtor deposit to a group of investors. According to the source, the negotiations that have been going on for several months are already at a very advanced stage and many holders of Centerra shares see great benefits from the deal offered by this group of investors. Thus, it is very likely that the contenders for Kumtor will gain enough supporters, which will allow the decision to withdraw the Kyrgyz deposit from Centerra's assets and sell it at the price offered by a group of investors.

[casual47] 21/5/2018 10:12

Another local news article which seems to say that despite Centerra's official line there seems to be some movement toward a sale:

[casual47] 15/5/2018 16:18

Agreed.

Anyone 'au fait' with the rules over on TSX? At what stage should Centerra suspend / update the market? As Kumtor is their main revenue source I imagine they would need to act accordingly if these talks should progress beyond a certain point?

[pjackson2] 15/5/2018 13:52

I would have thought that if things
We’re not going on behind the scenes
then suspension would have been lifted.
I see it as a positive that Chaarat
Are still in suspension.

[casual47] 15/5/2018 13:14

Struggling to find any recent articles re. Chaarat and Kumtor.

Most of the previous articles and tidbits were, I believe, actively driven by Chaarat and specifically Artem Volynets.

Last formal comment from Centerra was three weeks ago.

As far as I know there has been no formal comment from the Kyrgyz government or the state owned partner of Centerra, Kyrgyzaltyn (only noise was from the deputy CEO of Kyrgyzaltyn who claimed to not have seen the offer and that it needed to be studied)

Is the silence a good sign that talks are being had?

I presume if Chaarat was being shut out of the talks they would now be driving up the media efforts and particularly locally, targeting the hearts and minds of the people of Kyrgyzstan.

[casual47] 12/5/2018 17:31

Volynets was emphatic about wanting transparency and for an opportunity to have the offer to be discussed far and wide. Partly perhaps because he knows 'the people' will like it given the genuine dislike of and resentment for Centerra but mainly to not repeat how the Kumor deal was struck before - first time round in 2009 and then more recently end of last year when the now ousted prime minister decided to make a deal with Centerra to get them off the hook for their various legal cases in exchange for Centerra pumping 50+million money into e.g. an environmental fund etc. The latter was widely decried at the time and there was outrage that parliament was bypassed.

So, no doubt our M&A guy Artem is pressing all the right buttons and by doing so is exposing Centerra's weaknesses (transparency vs backroom deals, local investment vs Kumtor as a cash cow, Kyrgyz equal partner in the asset vs 26% shareholder of a foreign company etc)

[jc2706] 12/5/2018 16:54

This becomes more and more interesting. At the start of this process I gave the takeover very little chance of success. But the situation seems to improve with every new snippet of information and I think the odds are getting shorter.

[casual47] 12/5/2018 10:54

I think the Mining Capital guy is wrong about gold, though. The whole Iran stuff is just one big Kabuki dance, imo. All the initial huff and puff from Iran that we've seen so far has been the bare minimum tokenistic stuff. Even the strike against Israel was the bare minimum they could get away with (they had to do something in reaction to an earlier strike from Israel). I think Iran is ready for a new deal and they will be keen to dampen down on the more hot-headed folks.

Imo, I don't think we will see major movement of gold because of it (or any of the current political throes). If I had to bet I would say we won't see POG holding above $1400/oz for a couple years yet.

[casual47] 11/5/2018 23:36

Good find FH. Here is the link:

(replace the zeroes with an o in the URL bit before co.uk, seems ADVFN are touchy about posting links of their competitors)

What's interesting for me is the nugget that according to the interviewee the Chaarat offer is about to be discussed in the Kyrgyz parliament. Couldn't find this mentioned anywhere so that's an interesting bit of info.

[fishhead1] 11/5/2018 21:46

[...]

New vid on proactive touches on chaarat after about 3 minutes

Link above may not have worked, title starts "investors turning to gold...." and was posted today

[casual47] 11/5/2018 14:46

Shouldn't be long before we get the AGM notice. The AGM is usually early to mid July.

[casual47] 10/5/2018 14:57

Note to the above: the new M&A asset doesn't per se have to be a gold mine....I know they quoted a target of 1 Moz but this could also be made up of "gold equivalent" output.

Example: copper (and gold) mine owned by KAZ. The mine was briefly suspended by the Kyrgyz last November (some political spat between Kazakhstan and Kyrggyzstan, I believe, nothing to do with KAZ or the mine itself)

[casual47] 10/5/2018 12:33

Assuming Kumtor is one of the "advanced negotiation" projects then there must be at least one more M&A target that's very close to (unsollicited) offer stage (as per the April 2018 presentation).

If that second M&A asset is cash generating and would be seen as a consolidation / accretive to the Chaarat project (i.e. help with enabling it to bring into production and logistically/operationally compatible) then I don't see why there could not be a second offer being put on the table.

Perhaps it already is on the table...

Kumtor was probably leaked to poke the politicians into action so perhaps the second "advanced negotiation" M&A target doesn't require such?

The fact they are making an offer doesn't mean they expect it to complete this year....their target is 1 M&A transaction in H2 2018, so for a large project as Kumtor that could easily drag on to Q1 2019, especially if it needs to go through EGM for both companies and potentially a rights issue.

[rhuvaal2] 10/5/2018 09:29

But then our 'new' Directors are most capable operators :)

[jc2706] 10/5/2018 09:07

I can't recall a small company carrying out two takeovers at the same time. I would not want them to bite off more than they can chew and two takeovers whilst progressing Tulkubash would seem to be spreading themselves about a bit. Let's see what the likely outcome of Kumtor is first up. If that goes through (and it will take a lot of effort even if most of this is not visible to us) then the company will be well set up to take on what is a well established operation and utilise the case generation to further other opportunities (including their own!).