Pan African Resources Share Discussion Threads

[stonedyou] 12/3/2023 11:45

Silicon Valley Bank Officially Fails as FDIC Takes Over.


SVB held over $200 billion in assets, making this the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The embattled Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) has officially been closed down by the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation, making for the second-largest bank failure in U.S. history.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has been appointed as its receiver and will ensure all insured depositors gain full access to their funds by Monday, March 13.

Per a press release from the FDIC on Friday, the FDIC has simultaneously created the Deposit Insurance National Bank of Santa Clara (DINB) to protect SVB’s depositors, to which all insured deposits from the collapsed bank have been transferred.

Under the FDIC, insured deposits include account holdings of under $250,000.

Meanwhile, uninsured depositors will be granted a “receivership certificate” for their remaining uninsured deposits. The FDIC said future dividend payments “may be made to uninsured depositors,” as the agency sells off SVB’s assets.

“As of December 31, 2022, Silicon Valley Bank had approximately $209.0 billion in total assets and about $175.4 billion in total deposits,” stated the FDIC.

The agency said that it still needs additional information to determine exactly how much the bank’s total deposits exceed insurance limits.

SVB is the largest bank to fail since the Great Recession in 2008, when Washington Mutual Bank fell apart with $307 billion in assets, and was later acquired by JP Morgan.

Panic surrounding SVB began to spread on Wednesday after the bank announced an intended $2.25 billion raise and a $21 billion bond portfolio sale to restructure its balance sheet. The latter sale made the firm realize a loss $1.8 billion.

The following day, Paypal co-founder Peter Thiel urged companies to withdraw from SVB, while the bank’s CEO told clients to “stay calm”.

SVB’s attempted raise ultimately failed, and certain firms began examining the bank with possible hopes of acquiring it, according to CNBC.

The bank’s failure may be a partial reason for Bitcoin’s slide over the past two days to under $20,000.

Feature Image Courtesy of Bloomberg.

[stonedyou] 12/3/2023 10:13

Binance And Coinbase Temporarily Suspend USDC Conversion After Silicon Valley Bank Collapse.

The two biggest cryptocurrency exchanges, Binance and Coinbase, have revealed that they would temporarily suspend USDC conversions on their platforms. This comes in the aftermath of the collapse of US lender Silicon Valley Bank and concerns about its effect on USDC.

Binance And Coinbase Suspend USDC Conversion

Binance was the first to make a move by announcing that it had temporarily suspended its auto-conversion of USDC to BUSD. Citing current market conditions, the exchange added that it was a standard risk-management procedure while monitoring the market situation.

It should be noted that Binance had earlier in the year courted controversy with its decision to auto-convert USDC transactions to BUSD. At the time, Binance cited improving liquidity for users, and it is unknown if this latest development could lead to permanently delisting the stablecoin.

Following Binance’s announcement, Coinbase also tweeted that it would pause its USDC conversion to USD until Monday. The exchange noted that during heightened activities, conversions rely on USD transfers from banks completed during banking hours. It further added that conversions would resume on Monday when banks reopen.

Silicon Valley Bank’s collapse has caused a ripple effect in the fintech company, with several companies revealing their exposure to the U.S-based bank. Some affected crypto companies include Pantera, Avalanche, and BlockFi.

Circle, the company behind USDC, revealed on Friday that it had $3.3 billion of the $40 billion reserves backing the stablecoin in the now-defunct bank. It added in a statement on Twitter that Silicon Valley Bank was one of six banks it uses to manage 25% of USDC reserves. Circle noted that it would continue to operate normally while awaiting clarity from the FDIC on how SVB collapse would affect depositors.

USDC Market Cap Decreases Following Circle Announcement
Unsurprisingly the crypto market has reacted to the news with investors removing their assets from USDC. At the time of writing, more than $1.3 billion has been redeemed from the stablecoin in the past few hours.

The trading price of USDC has also suffered volatility dropping from its pegged value of $1 to as low as $0.93, according to data from CoinMarketCap. This is the lowest the stablecoin has reached since its all-time low of $0.89 in May 2019. Its marketcap has also reduced to $36 billion.

[stonedyou] 10/3/2023 16:24

Gold Prices Soar as US Bank Sector Woes Sink Bond Yields, Eyes on NFPs Next.


Gold prices rocketed higher on Thursday in an overall volatile 24 hours, finishing higher by 0.86%. That was the best single-day performance in almost one week. Most of the price action occurred during the Wall Street trading session. There, the Dow Jones, S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 plunged as the VIX market ‘fear gauge’ soared.

Most of the weariness was driven by concerns about the banking sector. This followed SVB Financial Group trying to shore up capital and Silvergate – a crypto-focused bank - winding down operations.

These events are another sign that historically high interest rates are taking their toll on the economy. It pushes investors away from riskier investments when you can earn a much better return in ‘risk-free’ Treasuries.

Concerns about the banking sector ate away at future Federal Reserve interest rate hike expectations. In fact, markets priced out one full 25-basis point rate hike in one-years’ time. This is what plunged Treasury yields over the past 24 hours. For gold, this is great news. Gold is an anti-fiat instrument. When the expected return on cash could fall in the future, that tends to produce a friendly environment for it.

With that in mind, the next critical piece of economic data is the non-farm payrolls report, due at 13:30 GMT. The US is seen adding 225k jobs in February with the unemployment rate holding steady at 3.4%. A still-solid jobs report could pour cold waters on less-hawkish Fed policy expectations. Such an outcome could result in gold reversing Thursday’s gain.

XAU/USD Daily Chart
Gold prices turned higher just above the February low at 1804. A bearish Death Cross between the 20- and 50-day Simple Moving Averages remain in play, offering a downside technical bias. If prices continue higher, the 50-day line could hold as resistance. Otherwise, clearing lower exposes the midpoint at 1787.

[creditcrunchies] 09/3/2023 21:31

It could be power related SA power grid is causing rolling blackouts on businesses. The main supplier Eskom is on the verge of collapse. Businesses are totally reliant on fuel generators in-between the daily blackouts

[creditcrunchies] 09/3/2023 21:20

It's a case of do you want to hear the good news or the bad news? At least they responded I guess

[astjgroom] 09/3/2023 20:32

So what to make of that...

[astjgroom] 09/3/2023 20:31

Reply from PAF:Good dayThank you for your email. There will be some news out early next week that will clarify matters. We are all significant holders of PAF and equally concerned. While we cannot control the share price we endeavour to mine profitably, reduce costs and grow production in the longer term. We will keep shareholders informed.

[johnbull1] 09/3/2023 16:33

True, buybacks were at 21. Since then rand gold price up 15% and Barberton to be turned aroudn and Mintails signed. Yet not only no management buying, theyre not ruling out small cap raise at 13? Somewhat ridiculous. At least op management better than their attitude to share price.

[cfb2] 09/3/2023 15:59

Especially as they recently did a number of share buybacks at a much higher price.

[astjgroom] 09/3/2023 15:55

Just emailed asking why there is no confidence been shown from directors

[johnbull1] 09/3/2023 15:10

Rnad gold price at all time high approaching 1100 (was 950 in first half (hxxps://goldprice.org/gold-price-south-africa.html)). Perhaps large seller just worried if no power, no gold? Why management not buying here?

[creditcrunchies] 08/3/2023 22:38

Quite unbelievable how these people think they invade a sovereign state, rape the women, commit war crimes, blanket bomb residential areas then blame the Americans. Impossible to even start negotiations with people like that. Not only that they've collapsed gold stocks anything linked to them dives south

[tuscan4] 04/3/2023 09:10

I think you will find that the US and Nato started this war in 2014

[stonedyou] 03/3/2023 16:26

At the end of the life of operations, we estimate that c 755koz of resources at MSC will have been mined, of which c 371koz will have been recovered, 431koz (ie approximately eight years’ worth of production) will have remained unmined and 384koz will have been redeposited in upgraded tailings storage facilities.

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On this basis, we calculate that the project will enhance Pan African’s earnings per share by an average 0.41c per share over the life of the operation, as shown below:


In the meantime, readers should note that our US$20.1m valuation of MSC as a development asset reconciles tolerably closely with our valuation of it of US$11.7m (or 0.61c per share) as an in-situ resource, based on the average value of in-situ gold resources listed in London of US$9.88/oz calculated in our report Gold stars and black holes, published in January 2019.

[stonedyou] 03/3/2023 16:24

Corporate growth projects

Mintails Soweto Cluster

On 6 November 2020, Pan African announced it had entered into a conditional agreement with the liquidator of the Mintails group for the purchase of the total share capital and associated loans of Mogale Gold and Mintails SA Soweto Cluster (MSC), comprising a number of TSFs to the west of Johannesburg, for ZAR50.0m (c US$2.9m at prevailing forex rates at the time) and the assumption of a closure environmental liability of c ZAR120m. As part of its due diligence process, on 30 June 2022, Pan African announced that it had successfully completed a definitive feasibility study (DFS) on the Mogale portion of Mintails’ assets. The study demonstrated compelling economics and the potential to significantly increase group gold production by c 25% over an initial mine life of 13 years and this was the subject of our note, Building steam, published on 7 July 2022. On 6 October, Pan African confirmed that it had successfully closed this transaction and, as such, Mogale is now fully incorporated into our valuation of Pan African (below). However, the MSC assets are not.

Although Pan African does not currently include MSC mineral resources in the Mogale mine schedule, a conceptual production schedule for this project was applied, based on available information, entailing the processing of reserves of the combined Mogale and MSC TSFs and demonstrated a more robust recovered ounce profile and an extended mine life for the project in excess of 20 years, as shown below:

[stonedyou] 03/3/2023 16:23

Group production profile

In the wake of H123 results, we continue to forecast that group production at Pan African will reach 253.9koz in FY26 (from a guided level of 195–205koz in FY23) and 272.8koz in FY29, and remain at approximately this level until at least FY33 (with production from Egoli still pending)

Growth projects

Following completion of its transaction to buy Mintails’ assets in October, Pan African has at least two immediate organic growth projects plus one further corporate growth project (Blyvoor tailings) in prospect for development in the future. Beyond these, it also has at least the Fairview sub-vertical shaft, Rolspruit, Poplar and Evander South assets available for potential development.