ThoughtsI've been an investor here for over 5 years and a part of this board for a long time. It's been fun to see Trevali move from explorer/developer and into a top 10 producer in that time. I remember the excitement of the commissioning of Santandar and what a milestone I thought that was. I would never have predicted top ten production of over 400 million ibs of zinc a year within 5 yeras of that. However, now that we're here, there are a few things that I hope Trevali does in the near furture (in the next year).
1. Get itself listed on the NYSE America (AMEX). As a top 10 global producer, this exposure is needed. It will open it up to many new private and institutional investors. It will also open it up to new analysts that have a lot more exposure and popularity. If they want to sell themselves as a top-10 zinc producer (or a legitimate mid-teir producer that's growing) I think this needs to happen.
2. They need to become quicker and more efficient with news releases. Larger miners don't take this long to produce financials and Traveli should focus on taking less time as well. Analysts and investors shouldn't wait until mid-march to get a clear idea of 2017 financials. There should be no questions about 2017 at this point. We should all be thinking about 2018 and the future right now, but we can't while waiting on last quarter and 2017 financials. They also need to keep shareholders more up to date on production targets, drill results, and info in general. The PEA delay from Halfmile/Stratmat should have never happened. Larger miners would never operate that way. There were multiple production misses as well (the commissioning phases of Santandar and Caribou both took longer than original timelines). The deal for the African mines was also delayed a month. Copper circuit was discussed at one point, but then not really addressed later. The Restigouche mine is supposed to be feeding Caribou by Q3. There should be updates on this and that time hack should be met. We shall see.
3. They need to use their cash to pay down debt and create a very healthy balance sheet for when the zinc price levels out after the bull market. The zinc price will level out at a price beneath current prices over the next 5 years. We don't know to what extent the price will drop from these levels, but it will happen over the next 5 years. Trevali needs to position itself to get rid of debt (or make it much lower) so it can continue having strong FCF if zinc returns to levels around 1.00 - 1.10. This allows companies to continue drilling campaigns and even acquisitions when precious metal prices aren't soaring. Companies that over-extent during huge bull runs find themselves in massive debt troubles when markets go back to normal. This happened with many Gold miners post 2012.
These are my thoughts. I love the company and I am excited for the future. I hope some of my concerns above will be thought of and addressed.
Michigan