Mining investors are shrewd buyers. These metals hounds shop around for projects with high grades, a robust resource, and strong management. Ideally, they would also like projects situated in favorable geography with abundant infrastructure.
The goal for these investors is to buy into a project (and company) at an early stage, with the goal – and hope – that the project will eventually become a highly profitable mining operation. Why not just buy shares in an established producer with high grades, strong management, excellent infrastructure, and which is also highly profitable?
Simple. Everyone wants to hold shares in such companies because they represent minimal risk. As a result, these established companies generally tend to be fully valued, providing little profit-making opportunity for investors.
However, this is not always the case. There is one investment window where investors have an opportunity to buy into the best producing miners, minimizing investment risk, while still having the potential for significant share price appreciation.
Mining is a cyclical industry. Look to buy into established producers with the best projects at the top of the market and investors know they will have to pay top-dollar for those coveted shares. But buy into the same mining company at the bottom of the cycle and these same shares are on sale.
Silvercorp Metals Inc. (TSX: SVM, NYSE MKT: SVM, Forum) is currently on sale.
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Silver is one of the metals which has endured a long trough in recent years, going back to 2011. Most media and analyst commentary on the silver market is woefully uninformed.
In the 1990’s; the price of silver was driven to a 600-year low in real dollars. This attack on the silver market essentially bankrupted more than 90% of the world’s silver mining companies.
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The price of silver has never come close to recovering in the decades since then except for a two-year interval starting in 2009 where the price of silver appreciated to over $40/oz. Over the last quarter century, only the highest grade silver deposits could still be mined at a profit.
This is why today the world gets the vast majority of its silver as a by-product of other mining. This has never happened before in history, not at any time in the 4,000+ years that humanity has been refining silver. Through all those millennia, we have always gotten the vast majority of our silver from primary silver mining.
Of note is that the silver market has never emerged from its permanent supply deficit. The few years where silver traded at something close to a rational price was not nearly enough to restore health to this sector. Not only is mining a cyclical industry, but the mine cycle (the time it takes from initial discovery of a deposit to construction of a mine) can easily extend to 10 years or longer.
The silver sector is entirely unsustainable. The world is running out of silver and when inventory default occurs, the price-spike that takes place will be unlike anything seen in commodity markets before. Silver is needed for jewelry. India alone imports close to 5,000 tonnes of silver per year for that purpose.
Silver is needed in industry. It is humanity’s most versatile metal. Silver is actually a more brilliant metal than even gold. This is why silver is irreplaceable as a component in the high-quality mirrors needed for the solar power industry. Silver is irreplaceable as a component in thousands of anti-microbial products – where silver has unparalleled qualities as an anti-microbial agent.
Silver is needed in the investing world. Some savvy investors still accumulate silver as an investment itself. Why not? It is the planet’s most-undervalued commodity. The U.S. Mint and Royal Canadian Mint have had increasing difficulty finding enough silver to keep their markets fully supplied.
This means buying real, physical silver, not the paper that the bankers trade in their “gold” and “silver” markets. In testimony before the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC), precious metals authority Jeffrey Christian acknowledged that 99% of what is traded in these futures markets is paper, not metal.
This leads back to the silver miners. Miners leverage the price of their commodity – naturally. We see a good example of this in looking at a long-term chart for Silvercorp.
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From peak to trough following the Crash of ’08, the price of silver increased by approximately a factor of six. From peak to trough following the Crash of ’08, the share price of Silvercorp was a ten-bagger.
Flash forward to 2017, and the price of silver sits in a trough. The share price of Silvercorp sits in a trough, despite the mild run-up in 2016.
No one can say for sure when the silver market will correct to a more rational valuation, and then remain at that elevated price for enough years for balance to be restored to the silver market. But while investors wait, Silvercorp will pay those shareholders a dividend.
Where do investors currently park their savings? Money-market funds? GIC’s? Getting next-to-zero interest? Hold shares in Silvercorp, and investors will receive a dividend roughly equivalent to what they can get in a savings instrument. What they also get in Silvercorp is strong capital growth potential.
And investors would be buying into a very well-managed company. Silvercorp was built from the ground up.
The Chairman and CEO of Silvercorp is Rui Feng. While a geologist by vocation, Feng’s passion is in entrepreneurial endeavours. Specifically, Feng enjoys tackling business opportunities and transforming them into near-term money-makers. It is this philosophy which has guided the operations of Silvercorp since its inception in 2004.
The Company’s premier asset is the Ying Mine Complex. SVM holds a 77.5% interest in Henan Found Mining Co. Ltd, the holding company through which the Ying Complex is managed. Ying is now comprised of six separate mines, along with two processing facilities with a rated capacity of 3,200 tpd’s. It produced approximately 5.6 million ounces of silver in 2016.
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With head grades of roughly 300 g/t, the Ying Mine Complex is one of the world’s highest-grade silver operations. The head grades alone are a testament to the vigilance of management in maximizing productivity.
As with most high-grade mining operations, Ying’s geology is comprised of narrow veins of very high grade ore. This means precision mining. If drilling starts to veer away from mineralization even slightly, this translates into a dramatic increase in the quantity of waste rock extracted.
The consequence of that is the head grade reaching the mill plunges lower. Thus even if ore throughput is maintained, the actual amount of silver extracted (as well as lead and zinc) drops significantly – reducing overall mine productivity.
Indeed, when head grades and mine productivity at Ying temporarily dropped off in 2013 and 2014, management’s response was to pioneer new, 21st century mine-management technology. Dubbed “the Enterprise Blog”, this new tech-heavy system for collecting and distributing mine data allows the Company to optimize its mining operations and thus maximize productivity.
The results of this innovative forward-thinking speak for themselves. Head grades at Ying are once again near/at an all-time high. Including lead and zinc credits, cash costs are well below $0. This ranks Silvercorp as the mining company with the planet’s lowest all-in sustaining costs of silver production.
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With robust production and the lowest costs, this translates into a high level of profitability. Already, other senior mining companies have heard of the Enterprise Blog and have made inquiries about implementing a similar mine-management system in their own operations.
As a result of this high productivity/profitability, SVM is one of the few mid-tier precious metals mining companies which pays its shareholders a dividend. While the dividend was temporarily suspended when the price of silver dropped to a rock-bottom level in 2013, the Company remained profitable, even in the overall depressed conditions in the sector.
Altogether, Silvercorp has now produced more than 50 million ounces of silver, almost all of that from the Ying Complex. SVM will be producing silver (and lead and zinc) for many years to come at Ying. With 95 million ounces of silver reserves and approximately 206 million ounces of silver resources, Ying currently boasts a 20-year mine life.
Years of such continuous profitability have fortified Silvercorp’s treasury. Today the Company sits with roughly $100 million in cash, cash-equivalents and short term investments as of December 31, 2016. What this means to CEO Feng is that it is time for SVM to go shopping.
In terms of acquisitions, Silvercorp is very particular about what sort of asset it is seeking to add to its portfolio of properties. That portfolio already includes two other mines, SVM’s GC and BYP mines.
The Company is only interested in high grade projects. Feng’s perspective here is simple. High grades de-risk a project. As already noted, mining is a cyclical industry. All things being equal, higher grades reduce cash costs, allowing the best projects to remain profitable even when the sector itself is in a trough.
SVM is also looking for silver projects which can be put into production in the near term, satisfying the CEO’s requirement that the Company’s projects have a short timeline to move to production. Ideally, Silvercorp would like to add additional assets close to the Ying Complex itself.
The current production rate at Ying averages roughly 2,000 tpd’s. This is the production sweet-spot that allows SVM to maximize profitability. This leaves excess mill capacity, meaning that the Company could easily truck-in ore from additional mine operations, further enhancing overall profitability.
However, given the demanding standards which Silvercorp sets for such purposes, SVM is prepared to look internationally for its next acquisition, perhaps even into Central and South America. Not only do nations like Mexico and Peru lead the world in total silver production, these jurisdictions have an abundance of high-grade deposits which satisfy the Company’s acquisitions criteria.
Silvercorp represents minimal investor risk. Silvercorp represents an excellent opportunity for long-term capital growth. Investors rarely see those two qualities attached to the same company. For this reason, SVM is a mining company for the Smart Money.
silvercorpmetals.com
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FULL DISCLOSURE: Silvercorp Metals Inc is a paid client of Stockhouse Publishing.
PERSONAL DISCLOSURE: I hold physical silver bullion.