| From: jrlsss7 | 3/29/2012 12:24:42 PM | | | | | | Financing a challenge for junior miners
Wed Mar 28, 2012 5:24pm EDT
* Only top-flight projects a good bet for financing
* Equity financings dry up
* M&A sluggish
* Projects face long road to production
By Cameron French
TORONTO, March 28 (Reuters) - Despite steady commodity prices, financing remains a challenge for junior miners, and a sluggish M&A environment means many projects face a long road to development, a financing panel told the Reuters Global Mining and Metals Summit.
While high-grade projects in stable jurisdictions are still a good bet to find money, lower-grade projects that would have been a slam-dunk just a few years ago are facing a grim market.
"From my perspective it's virtually non-existent," Krisztian Toth, a mining M&A lawyer at Fasken Martineau, said of the potential for equity financing, traditionally the go-to way to cash up a junior explorer.
While gold and copper prices are at historically high levels, junior mining stocks have lagged and traded in sluggish volumes that deter investors who may want to unload shares at a later date.
Indeed, mining stocks in general have been on the defensive of late.
The mining-heavy S&P/TSX materials index, home to companies such as Barrick Gold and Teck Resources, has fallen 9 percent in March, compared with a 2 percent decline of the broader S&P/TSX composite index .
"That causes a lot of these junior explorers to hesitate when it comes to raising additional monies, because their valuations are so low and they don't want the dilution," said Michael White, chief executive of junior-focused IBK Capital.
The cheap valuations would normally be expected to lure senior miners looking to fill up their project pipeline.
But larger players have been picky of late, which experts said is partly due to the fact that many have full project pipelines and worry about cost overruns at new projects.
Banks, meanwhile, have all but disappeared from the junior market, due largely to fallout from the European debt crisis, experts say.
"Since the global financial crisis, the number of project lenders in the mining industry dropped to where you can count them on your fingers. What's happening now is all the European banks now have just dropped off in the last year," said David Harquail, chief executive of royalty company Franco-Nevada .
Harquail says that, with few alternatives, junior miners have flooded his company looking for financing options.
While the situation is not as dire as 2009, when some small players went belly-up due to the combination of a commodity crisis and a lack of credit, the lack of funding means many juniors taking the step from exploration property to construction project will face delays, which could eventually squeeze metals supply.
However, with long-term demand for gold and base metals not likely to dry up, junior players can still reward a patient investor, said Michael Boyd, a mining M&A banker at CIBC.
"It is creating an environment now where arguably it's a buyers market just in terms of the valuations have been crushed down so low," he said.
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/03/28/mining-summit-financing-juniors-idUSL2E8ERRZZ20120328 |
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| From: jrlsss7 | 4/5/2012 10:54:40 AM | | | | | | | Looks like someone unloaded a few shares to give Wolv a new 52 week low. Hope they enjoy their $136.50 less commission. |
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| To: DrFeelgood who wrote (133) | 7/4/2012 4:04:44 PM | | From: jrlsss7 | | | | | Unfortunately true. We need a boost and summer would be the best time for it. Hope we don't have to wait until Fall for drilling and get caught up with mother nature again. Here's to some great results. |
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| To: DrFeelgood who wrote (133) | 7/6/2012 8:49:35 PM | | From: doubloon | | | | | These are definitely quiet times, behind the scenes the company has been active and will announce when the time is right. I have taken the opportunity to grab about 1.5 million shares at this price as a cost average down. If anyone has belief in the grab samples on a 24 city block area that went from 2.4 to 6.4 % Copper then they have to believe that the ground induced polarization survey showed 300 yards by 7/8 of a mile of a magnetic disturbance it must mean something... Irregardless of what the current attitude is towards the mining sector (or this company on certain public message boards) the fact remains, the top people in the industry have proven that something is there. |
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| From: doubloon | 7/7/2012 1:07:51 PM | | | | | | The 2012 Wolverine drill program (repeat)
The final report on the induced polarization (IP) survey by Abitibi Geophysics has been received and reviewed by Wolverine. The report outlines a number of chargeability anomalies that require follow-up by prospecting and drilling. Some additional IP work is suggested to further outline newly detected targets that are open along strike and extend beyond the survey grids.
On Grid Two are located several chargeability anomalies with high associated resistivity that is more suggestive of bedrock sulphide conductors than overburden. These targets are generally shallow (within 10 – 15 m of surface) and could be targeted by shallow drilling. Anomalies CR2-06 and CR2-07, for example, have strike extents of 1.3 km and 1.0 km respectively and are both Priority One targets. Both anomalies are open to the southwest and extend beyond the survey grid.
Also on Grid Two are a series of chargeability anomalies (CR2-01, CR2-02 and CR2-03) that are located in close proximity to previously discovered malachite showings in rock cuts along the Trans Labrador Highway. These three anomalies could represent copper-carrying sulphide mineralization that has leached out the malachite. These anomalies are all open to the northeast ad have strike lengths ranging from 325 m to 900 m.
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