RE:RE:Sandstrom Management Not Selective Enough
The number of mines they examine for a potential streaming agreement is irrelevant in my opinion. If they examine 500 mines and all those mines have either too much political risk or mining risk or financing risk or their cost of production per ounce is too high or too optimistic (regardless of the price SSL will pay for a % of those ounces), you don't do the deal. Conversely, if of the next 10 mines they examine, 3 are politically and economically sound with great management and a very high probability of success, then go ahead and buy all three. SSL used to have a online slide presentation which stated that they will only invest in politically stable jurisdictions. Then they invest in a stream in Mongolia. Now that presentation has disappeared from the SSL website. There is no need for them to enter into overly speculative streams - lots of juniors need cash - and the reason is that gold mines are very expensive to develop to the point of actually producing ounces, so if you are SSL and you are planning to be a long-term success story as a company, there is no need to enter into deals with tiny microcap companies which will likely need far more financing than you can provide, or streams in politically volatile nations, or streams with companies who obviously need far more capital than you are providing to produce the ounces you expect (see Collosus Minerals, even without the unforseen water inflow problem they recently encountered). I think mistakes have been made that could have been avoided had they looked before they lept into some of these streaming agreements.