Conversation with Stephen Twyerould I had the opportunity to talk with Stephen last week. I didn’t learn anything new, but did walk away from the phone call with more optimism. Here are some highlights from the call:
- Acid supply issues will begin to improve by the end of the year.
- He expects the issues to largely resolve by end of February 2021 and should be completely resolved by mid-year.
- They are continuing to do processing on a subset of the wells in the wellfield.
- He could not provide specifics, but said that he was “happy and optimistic” on results to date.
- He disclosed they encountered a few issues, but said the issues were largely resolved.
I also asked him if they had fired up the SXEW as a number of s/h have asked about that. His response was a question to me as to why I felt that was important. My reply was that many s/h's are looking to cathode as being the tangible proof that there is copper coming out of the ground and that the process "works".
He didn't dismiss my question, but the implication was that the SXEW is the lowest risk part of the operation. Once it's in the pond as copper bearing solution, Excelsior simply uses industry standard processes to extract the copper. He didn't directly answer my question, but I was left with the impression that - yes - they have exercised the SXEW. I don't know if they've produced any cathode.
I have not posted much since the shutdown as I have not had anything tangible to report. I am hopeful that we will receive a corporate update in the next month or so. I bought a significant number of additional shares when the price dipped into the 40 cent range. I've not sold any shares to date.
The relative performance chart below of Excelsior compared to Copper shows that – while copper recovered nicely – Excelsior significantly trails copper in price recovery. In my opinion, that creates a good opportunity for a dramatic rebound once good news is released regarding Excelsior’s ability to recover copper from the mine.
Hope this helps.
PG