This is not the only cheap copper play With about 4.5 billion lbs of copper with the latest resource update and 60% attributable to CCY, this works out to about 2.7 billion lbs of Copper indicated and inferred. With 240 mil shares and an 0.11 share price - CCY has a cap of about $27.0 million which translates into a 1 cent per pound in situ value - which is really quite cheap. Most projects trade at over 4 cents per pound.
However, take a look at Candente(T.DNT) and thier Canariaco project in Peru that has over 10 billion lbs indicated and inferred. They are trading at about 1.2 cents per lb which is very close to the CCY evaluation, and they have a very similar overal grade of about 0.4% copper. This deposit is high elevation in the Andes with no nearby power, but it's much larger than the CCY deposit plus the gold credits are higher.
Lastly there is Ross Beaty's Lumina Copper which trades at about 3 cents per lb. It is about 15 billion lbs indicated and inferred, it has much higher gold credits and the overall grade is much higher - about 0.8% which is about twice the grades reported by both Candente and Catalyst.
Anyhow, I am long CCY, but we as investors need to be aware that we are not the only undervalued Copper play out there. My pholosophy is to follow the smart money, and you can bet that Mr Guistra did not write his recent checks blindly, and that he did plenty of dd before grabbing a sizeable inside chunk of CCY.
That said, Ross Beaty's Lumina is very juicy and I wish I had picked some up when I first encoutered that deal when it was half of the current levels. All of the above mentioned deposits have considerable room to grow as well and I am sure there are others. We should be aware that in the last cycle, pre 2008 meltdown, all of the 1% high grade copper projects were snuffed out except for Lumina. The CCY and DNY projects are definitely lower grade so they need to be amenable to low cost open pit operations. 0.4% Cooper grades translates into about 8 lbs per ton and at $3.50/lb value, that means each ton has a gross value of about $28.00. You have to pre-strip the mine first, then mine the ore, then process the ore, then have the concentrate smelted, then pay for capital costs, so it had better be a low cost operation. My guess is that Mr guistra and his crew have already done thier own internal scoping study before his investents were made.
Good Luck to all Longs!
Jandd