RE: Up Up and Up .....Semafo is being accumulated in my opinion by bigger players. Semafo is not that well known but is one of the few miners that is consistently profitable, even at high gold prices. The steady organic growth in production is a positive and if they can close the acquisition the CEO talked about, they can vault into the Intermediate Producer category of 400K+.
This is important because as gold miners get bigger, the market assigns a higher multiple to their earnings and cashflow. 20X eps would put Semafo at C$4 right now. Could easily happen by late 2009/early 2010 when Semafo updates the market on increased capacity at Mana and they move monthly production into the 25K/month range.
Kitco has tables from Bill Matlack that compares various miners.
stockhouse won't let me post link but you can find it on the kitco metals com site.
Check out RBI. Similar near term cashflow to SMF but check the difference in market cap!
Also look at the avg p/e ratio of the intermediate vs the small cap groups. Would you rather have 10.4 p/e or 23.2p/e ratio? I vote for 23.2!!!!
Of course, any acqusition would have to be accretive and on good terms for Semafo. I'm sure there are lots of competitors and any bargain will contain operating and financial risks.