Confusing Numbers=Was This Planned and If So Why??Like many of you, I have spent a number of hours examining/crunching the numbers and they just don't appear to add up. I went back to Q3 of 2017 and compiled a spreadsheet to try and make some sense out of what was released today. Please see the bottom of this post.
What doesn't seem to make sense is the total gold mined figure for Q3. I think it is pretty safe to assume that the grade of gold mined for the quarter (excluding the "living room") should be relatively the same as the previous few quarters. If this is the case, and removing the "living room" of course gold, the figures don't add up.
From the Oct 2 press release it says
"To date, approximately 27,000 ounces of high grade coarse gold has been recovered from a 60 m3 cut (167 tonnes) on 15 Level...." Now, I am going to explain why I don't believe that all of this gold is actually included in todays figures:
If we remove these figures from the chart I have put together below, the total amount of Gold tonnes mined changes very little (0.167) which means that the remainder of all the gold tonnes mined (the ore) for the quarter has an expectedly low value of gold in it, (including all the gold they processed from the ROM pad from the previous quarter).
Remember, "Gold tonnes Mined" figure is in 000s of tonnes and the "living room of gold" is only 167 tonnes or 0.167 of 1000 tonnes. Therefore is we take it off the total figure, it basically does not drop from 146,000 tonnes. However, the total amount of gold processed would drop to 4360 ozs (31360-27000).
Now I find it very hard to believe that out of all the other ore (gold tonnes mined) they only got 4360 ozs of gold (0.93g/t), when they have consistently mined between 2.24g/t and 3.14g/t over the past year, with it increasing each quarter.
So just how much of this "living room" of gold has been counted as mined for Q3?
If we assume a conservative gold rate of 2.5g/t, and take out the living room size body of ore which contained all this gold, then they would still have produced approximately 365000 grams or 11735 ozs of gold (146000 tonnes x 2.5 g/t ).
Now, if all the other non "living room" gold is removed from the "gold mined" figure, it would mean that the company has only included 19625 ozs (31360-11735) of the "living room=27000oz" discovery from the Oct 2 news release. Please remember, that this figure is probably on the low side given the conservative estimate of 2.5g/t used for the rest of the ore processed. At 3.14 g/t, which is the previous quarter rate, they would have processed 14739oz from the non "living room" of gold, and thus leaving only 16621 grams to have been counted form the 27000 oz living room.
If this i then the ts true, then the total production figure for Q3 could have been over 40000 ozs, if it all had been included in Q3, and the market would have probably been flat (at worst) to the news release.
So why wasn't this gold included???? The news release about the 27000 oz was released Oct 2nd. Therefore, much of this gold may have not actually made it into September's numbers. Was it offically removed (mined) on Oct 1st or later.
Please note that the Oct 2 news release states "
With resumption of mining in the initial Father's Day Vein development area later this week......".
When I initially read this news release I thought "Have they done nothing since the Sept 9th news release of the original discovery?"
Then when they announced last week that a drill was arriving on site, I started thinking that pretty much very little had been done for the last six or so weeks.
So where is this ore? I guess it was officially still not "mined" as of Sept 30.
And the ROM figure. It went down significantly this past quarter. More ore was milled then previous quarters. Was there a quarter ending push to get more ore milled??? If so why?? As previously mentioned, this extra ore milled should have raised the gold milled up to almost double the previous quarter, even without the "living room" of gold.
Between the news releases and today's figures, I am left with numerous questions that only the company can answer. Why did they do this? Was it on purpose? Selby seems like a pretty bright guy, so why put out such figures?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated. | Beta Hunt Gold and Nickel Operation1 | Q3 2018 | Q2 2018 | Q1 2018 | Q4 2017 | Q3 2017 |
| Gold tonnes mined (000s) | 146 | 132 | 169 | 160 | 146 |
| Gold mined grade (g/t)3,4 | 6.67 | 3.14 | 2.54 | 2.47 | 2.24 |
| Gold mined (ounces)2,3,4 | 31,360 | 13,320 | 13,780 | 12,722 | 10,489 |
| Gold tonnes milled (000s) | 199 | 112 | 110 | 158 | 182 |
| Gold mill grade (g/t) | 5.26 | 3.29 | 2.36 | 2.39 | 2.23 |
| Gold Recovery (%) | 95 | 92 | 92 | 92 | 90 |
| Gold milled (ounces)5 | 33,725 | 11,844 | 8,372 | 12,128 | 13,047 |
| Gold sales (ounces)1 | 23,805 | 11,508 | 7,978 | 12,896 | 8,659 |
| ROM PAD (kt) | 70.5 | 126.5 | 104 | 45 | 43.5 |