New Highs
It's interesting that the new highs are being achieved with little or no announced news and gold struggling to hold $1100
Once the 4th qtr earnings came out there was the usual drop due to the sell on news. Since then the price has climbed pretty consistently on decent volume. The conference call gave out a lot of useful info.
I think LaSalle can now talk openly about the results and why the earnings miss. A couple of very key points in his conference call which get missed by the knee jerk sellers.
All corporate bonus cheques came out of the 4th qtr. They make their number they pay the bonus based on year end. I think there were $4mm in additional G&A expenses. LaSalle said they can't accrue these because they don't actually know if they will be payable. Not like a salary which accrue weekly.
I
n addition they had all of the costs of stripping Nyafee in the 4th quarter but no revenue. This should will be picked up in the costs for the 1st quarter and beyond. 5 days left in the qtr and as of a week ago they are on target for at least 60,000 oz. Mana is running at 6900 TPD
Another non cash item which affects the income statement was the write down/depreciation of equipment.
There should be plenty of drill results coming out shortly on the various properties. There was a Feb 2010 announcement of followup drilling on some high PPB gold samples that were taken. This should be out soon.
LaSalle's quote "the holdings on the Mana property alone were as big as the Abitibi belt" . That's quite a statement. There are 9 brokerages covering now so the story is getting a little more interesting.
A takeout is possible but more likely if they find a very big resource in their drilling. That's probably some time down the road.
Wes