Metals Exploration Share Discussion Threads

[mattjos] 29/4/2024 19:07

Personally, not expecting an increase in production.

Steady state production with well controlled costs & a handsome differential between AISC and average sales price achieved over the next 4 years from Runrono - that'll be absolutely 'terrific'!!

[goldmineralan] 29/4/2024 18:54

The update can be described as "good" but not "terrific". The production has only been increased from 21.299 ounces in Q1 2023 to 21,465 in Q1 2024. The increase in cash is because the price of gold has increased by 10%.
It looks promising for good full year results in Mid May

[mattjos] 29/4/2024 08:14

Terrific update.Irrespective of the final agreement with RHL, this company now throwing off $1m+ per week in FCF.More than adequate for the planned exploration & development at the new tenements, which I'm sure we all look forward to hearing more about over rest of 2024.Exciting times ahead.

[sparki2] 29/4/2024 07:08

A stunningly good set of 1st Q results - what a great start for the new expansion strategy

[mattjos] 27/4/2024 10:48

On the High Street in Hungerford, a historic market town about an hour west of Reading, is Nigel Montgomery’s stamp and coin shop. He has traded precious metals for about 50 years, but has never seen a gold rush like this: the price of a troy ounce, the unit used to weigh precious metals that dates to the Middle Ages, hit an all-time high this month, above $2,400. “We’ve never seen so much retail demand as we are seeing at the moment,” says the 67-year-old. “I’ve been through various gold and silver booms since the 1970s — we’re seeing a more sustained, stronger and genuine rally.” Investors have snapped up tax-free capital gains in gold sovereign and Britannia coins to hedge their portfolios against inflation and any escalation of conflict in the Middle East. So much so that Montgomery is continuously having to replenish his stock.
But the origins of this gold rush are thousands of miles from Montgomery’s town — and far from the historic global trading centres of London, Zurich and New York — in Beijing and Shanghai.
The People’s Bank of China led record gold purchases by central banks in 2022 and 2023, collectively buying above 1,000 tonnes each year, as emerging markets sought to diversify their reserve holdings away from the US dollar, which was weaponised by Washington in sanctions against Russia after its invasion of Ukraine.
Chinese retail investors have amassed gold as other investments from property to local equities turn sour. Chinese hedge funds and other speculators have also piled in.
“This rally has Chinese characteristics written all over it,” says John Reade, chief market strategist at the World Gold Council, an industry lobby group. “Everything leads back to different actors in China.”
While punters in Hungerford and at Costco stores across the US go gaga for gold, the western investor has, by and large, sat on the sidelines of gold’s latest rally. Gold-backed exchange traded funds (ETFs) have continued to experience monthly outflows, while bar and coin demand has been abysmal in Germany, typically the world’s third-largest market.
Andreas Habluetzel, chief executive of Degussa Goldhandel, Europe’s largest gold dealer, which owns London’s Sharps Pixley, says the cost of living crisis and stubborn inflation is driving customers to sell.
“We all want to keep the same lifestyle: sending your kids to good schools and owning two cars. When we talk to the middle-income people they are liquidating as they need money,” he says.
That creates a dilemma for the western armchair investor. Gold has rallied some $600 per troy ounce since conflict erupted between Israel and Hamas in October, yet the staggering rise is widely seen by analysts as disproportionate to the gold price’s usual drivers: real rates on US Treasuries, the dollar and ETF flows. “This is not the behaviour of gold. It’s more or less the behaviour of crypto,” says Habluetzel.
When the asset is so volatile, should investors rely on it as a haven asset? And if the market’s centre of gravity is shifting to a set of investors in China with a fundamentally different set of concerns to your own, should you bank on backing bullion?
From a tactical perspective, gold’s sharp rise could make it poised for a sharp correction, having already fallen about $50 this week, making it a dangerous entry point.
But others argue gold has a cohort of buyers waiting in the wings for any dips to pile into gold — including western ETF investors that have not participated yet. Deutsche Bank analyst Michael Hsueh says that it is likely that “any profit-taking by early investors would be replaced by investment from those who have so far not participated in the move”.
Looking further out, the question for investors is whether they believe the global monetary system is at the early innings of sweeping transformation. That might be a new era of persistent inflation that erodes the purchasing power of fiat currencies and great power competition that increases gold’s share of reserve assets at the US dollar’s expense.
Max Belmont, portfolio manager of the Gold strategy at First Eagle Investments, an asset manager, says that gold is “sniffing out” mounting concerns over the sustainability of global debt levels.
US debt increases by about $1tn every 100 days or so with interest rates at their current levels, while investors fear Europe could struggle to manage debt levels if Donald Trump enters the White House and pushes for Nato defence spending to rise. The IMF warned this month that the US, China, Italy and the UK “critically need to take policy action” on debt. Neither US presidential candidate shows much sign of wanting to rein in spending.
Nicky Shiels, precious metals analyst at MKS Pamp, a Swiss refinery and trader, says surging gold prices anticipate a “big regime change the west is going through”, from erosion of US dollar purchasing power, higher-for-longer inflation and a multipolar world.
When it comes to US debt, she says the market has grown increasingly convinced that the Fed may cut interest rates even if inflation roars higher in order to reduce the interest payments that the US government is servicing (the Fed is independent of the Treasury).
“This is it: two decades of easing monetary policy coming to a head,” she says.
On the other hand, emerging market central banks and sovereign wealth led by China, Russia and the Middle East are buying gold after the US sanctioned billions of dollars of Moscow’s reserves held in US bonds.
“It’s the dollar losing utility as an asset to store trade surpluses,” says John Hathaway, managing partner of Sprott Inc, a Canadian asset manager specialising in metals. Gold has traditionally tracked real rates of US Treasuries but he adds that “the Fed’s policies may not matter anymore to gold prices” given the new club of buyer’s motivations.
And Chinese investors are taking cues from their own central banks’ purchases. “An awful lot of private wealth is going to be running into gold as there’s nothing else to buy: property sucks, equities lose you money, cash in the bank is paying nothing and they can’t get the money offshore,” says Adrian Ash, director of research at BullionVault, an online gold marketplace.
But others say geopolitical risks, the dollar’s demise and debt concerns are over-egged.
“The world is not nearly as risky as [in] 1980,” says James Steel, chief precious metals analyst at HSBC, when gold hit its inflation-adjusted record high well above $3,000 per troy ounce.
For retail investors concerned that they missed riding the wave of frothy gold prices, one option could be gold mining equities.
Valuations of the world’s gold producers, led by Newmont and Barrick Gold, have rarely been as heavily discounted in the past 40 years versus the gold price as they are now, according to asset manager Schroders. That has made the gold mining sector’s collective valuation at roughly $300bn no bigger than Home Depot, the US DIY retailer.
The theory is that lofty gold prices will feed through to higher margins when gold producers next report earnings, sending share prices shooting up.
“It’s a different risk-reward. If gold prices double then you should get a bigger increase in your margin,” says Robert Crayfourd, who manages the Golden Prospect Precious Metals fund at CQS, an asset manager.
Jim Luke, fund manager at Schroders, wrote in a recent note that “dismal western sentiment” on gold and poor operational delivery by the sector’s leading companies were behind the low valuations.
“It is not hyperbole to say the sector could rally 50 per cent and still look inexpensive,” he says.
Gold mining equities face structural challenges from their ESG credentials, as they play little role in the energy transition, rising political risk in cash-strapped developing nations from Mali to Mexico and declining reserves.
More troubling, however, is that this gold rally has been driven by the Chinese central bank, retail investors, asset managers and funds for whom western gold mining equities hold little appeal. Investors have been deterred by the sector’s inability to tame cost inflation from vital inputs such as fuel, explosives and cyanide in the past couple of years and overspending during previous booms. Fund managers want to see proof that margins will march higher.
“It has taken seven years to get a 100 per cent return on gold when you can do that in bitcoin in a year Jason Todt John McCluskey, chief executive of Alamos Gold, a mid-sized Canadian gold producer, says that the tech-led run for equity markets, with the Dow Jones breaking above 38,000, makes it hard to call when gold producers will get a look in.
“‘The party is going full tilt. I think I’ll go home to check the gas is on’ — you’re not going to do that now. ‘I’ll stick it out and put it in these gold funds that haven’t performed well for 10 years’ — you don’t do that,” he says. But, he adds: “When they see the margins then they will buy those equities.”
Jason Todt calls himself one of the new breed of “retired gold bugs” who are partying hard.
After the global financial crisis, the manager of a car dealership in Missouri spent $100,000 from a property sale on gold. Had the 47-year-old held on to all of his bullion until now, it would be worth $120,000. Instead, Todt earned $1.5mn by selling $65,000 of his gold hoard in 2017 to buy bitcoin and other assets, enabling him to retire early in 2020, meet his Ukrainian wife and travel the world in a sailboat.
“It has taken seven years to get a 100 per cent return on gold when you can do that in bitcoin in a year,” he says.
Todt’s situation highlights the pull for many investors of potential mega-returns through cryptocurrencies, AI and tech stocks over the pursuit of wealth preservation.
Laith Khalaf, head of investment analysis at AJ Bell, warns that even for those trying to cling on to their wealth, gold often fails to fulfil its “safe haven” reputation because it is volatile and trades sideways or downwards for long periods of time. “It shouldn’t be a big part of your portfolio,” he says. “No more than 5 per cent.”
But the wealthy of the world appear to disagree. US funds, family offices and asset managers are increasing gold’s allocation within their portfolios to 10-15 per cent, up from 5-7 per cent, says Habluetzel of Degussa.
That is underpinned by gold’s long-run ability to preserve wealth — if bought at the right time. Since 1970, when US President Richard Nixon untethered the dollar from gold, bullion has produced an average return of just below 8 per cent a year, says Peter Clark, a retired fund manager.
For Montgomery in Hungerford, gold is a must-have insurance policy for investors to protect themselves against an end to the equity and crypto mania.
“If we had world peace and a more stable economy, gold would be steady or go down,” he says. “But the world isn’t a stable place. People have had a really good run on the stock markets and property prices have kept going up. W

[johnybigarms] 26/4/2024 23:16

Top slicing at 5p is foolish, the last time MTL was 5p we just started production, gold was $1100 and we had taken a $81 million loan with HSBC, that was Feb 2017, the CEO at the time purchased £250k worth of shares and I thought, mmmm, if he’s that confident, I will have a cheeky £5k, and if all had gone better with production we wouldn’t have nearly gone bust by 2019.
My point is you can’t compare MTL back then and now, Debt free, gold at $2300 plus and producing solid 80k ounce gold sales per annum, yet here we are still at 5p, the reason is simple, the market doesn’t know yet how good we are, it’s playing catchup and it’s about to be noticed, 10p may be a point I would contemplate selling a few, maybe 10%
This is definitely just about to start and selling any is really foolish, ask those from Thursday, regrets already, don’t sell into a rising stock that’s got it all.

[johnyee 7] 26/4/2024 16:15

Aren't we due an update next week going from history?

[giantpeach2] 26/4/2024 16:11

Where was this tipped 1knocker.

[davr0s] 26/4/2024 13:38

You'd be pretty narked if you were scared out of your position yesterday. Good lesson of the volatility you can get with mining stocks so have to accept

[ih_845578] 25/4/2024 22:15

Thanks Very much J

Best wishes

[jailbird] 25/4/2024 22:06

Legend Foolish not to already have top sliced your holding here , everyone to their own Greed is a sin and the downfall of many

[1knocker] 25/4/2024 18:45

Welll done Legend. It must have been tempting though to sell enough to leave you wirth a free ride.

[ih_845578] 25/4/2024 17:40

Still keeping all of my 12.25 million MTL shares bought at an average price of 1.67 pence from June 2022.

Hope that the Q1 RNS appears this Friday 26th April.

vglalth

[1knocker] 25/4/2024 16:51

This company has been tipped. Tha probably accounts for some of the share price spike up.

I was rather late in (early this month) at 4.9, but managed to sell at 5.3 before the pull back and got in again today at 4.79. My net price paid is still higher than i would like (probably shockingly high to those on this board who have held for a while), but better than it was.

Now i just need the POG to do its bit!

I suspect that the recent pull back in PM prices is more a function of $ strength than PM weakness. Its the sterling price which matters more to us.

[jedi k] 25/4/2024 16:31

Now that the shareholder loan have been paid back, the only way they can continue to receive cash is either selling some shares or dividends. They have got a lot of shares.

[mattjos] 25/4/2024 16:13

There has been stong demand for the shares & they have to come from somewhere.
I imagine he simply instructed his broker to sell them and they have done so over a period of time & then told him once the whole quantity has been sold and then he's filed his declaration.

[marmalade44] 25/4/2024 15:49

It must have been a private sale as there were only 2.3m shares traded on 22rd April.

Somebody bought his 50m shares. I wonder who?

[nesnoor] 25/4/2024 15:17

Top shareholder sold 3% of rheir holding. Didn't you see the RNS?

[mccrecord13] 25/4/2024 15:10

Anyone know the reason for the reduction in price today?

[urchin1] 25/4/2024 08:13

Anyone know the date when MTL will Rns Q1 results?Could it be the last working day in April That being Tuesday 30th.

[backmarker] 23/4/2024 03:14

Bit of a stretch. I wouldn't put much faith in that chart.

[gary hindsight] 22/4/2024 19:02

Last year update was 25th so it could be this week, maybe even tomorrow

[davr0s] 22/4/2024 16:59

Nothing to see if you zoom out unless you are trying to day trade this

[urchin1] 22/4/2024 16:44

disappointing end to the day!When is Q1 report due?