RE:InterestingYes, another interesting announcement. Clearly Newmont, the biggest ‘gold’fish and our biggest shareholder, still wants to maintain its position, with a little over 16% of QEX – and this has caused Skeena to now increase its percentage to a full 14% on a larger share base, up slightly from their recent 13.8% on a slightly smaller share base. Interesting that our 2 largest shareholders now own 30% between them.
Of course these new monies create some share dilution. A quick ‘back of the napkin’ calculation (if I did it correctly) says we will have roughly about 40M shares out, with just over $11M in the treasury for use. Of course you always want to minimize the number of shares, but on the other hand, at this time, there is no other apparent revenue source readily available. So ‘it is what it is’ – that’s the cost of doing business to be able to progress – and we are progressing – I believe what is happening to us now is actually transformational.
We don’t know what discussions took place between the various parties before and during the finalizing of the PP – the fact it came out in 3 announcements indicates to me that perhaps there wasn’t unanimity between the various parties and perhaps some pressures had to be brought to bare by the sequencing of the announcements.
Although what was said in the announcements was interesting, I believe what wasn’t said is even more interesting – the ‘whale in the closet’, Castle, wasn’t mentioned at all, not even in the last announcement which focused on Newmont’s participation. At the end of the day that may turn out to be meaningless – or (and now I start hyper-speculating) – why didn’t QEX wait to announce the PP until Newmont made its decision; were/are they in larger negotiation with Newmont regarding Castle; do they need to await the finalizing of Newmont’s purchase of GTT, before making any announcement about Castle; with Skeena now also a large shareholder, is QEX being a little stronger in its dealings with Newmont than it might otherwise have been…. – who knows, but certainly Castle is the ‘whale in the closet’ and will eventually have great impact on QEX… As LJ reminded us, in the Cruz interview, TB said that Newmont’s best option for making Saddle a mine probably includes needing to use a piece of Castle property for part of their infrastructure; he seemed to speculate the value for that alone would about equal QEX’s market value of the day.
I could go on to speculate ‘until the cows come home’. But my point is that, QEX is holding off announcing any plans/actions regarding Castle, even now when it seems to have the monies to go forth if it wanted to – and I suspect there are some very specific reasons for that, although not yet public.
Regarding my previous comment about not knowing when to sell my shares – fyi – this is all new to me, I originally bought shares about 4 years ago, kept them (and they were eventually consolidated 10-1) and then re-stocked again last Fall. I’ve watched and seen that a number of you seem to buy early in the new year and then sell early in the Fall, and I guess buy again during the dip in the early part of the next year… Obviously my nature is that of a ‘holder’ – I haven’t decided what I will do this year. Provided QEX continues to develop/progress, I expect to be here at least medium term (more than 1-2 years). My current thoughts are shaping up towards continuing to hold this year, concerned that if I sold late in the Fall at a good profit, with the intent to rebuy early in the next year, that I risk having to buy back in at a higher price (rather than lower), especially with all the action that will be happening probably throughout most, if not all, of the year – even more so, when TB talks of exploration in Southern BC later this Fall. I’d be interested in anyone’s thoughts about this issue.
Question: does anyone have a reasonably pragmatic ‘guestimate’ of the worth of 500,000ozs. of gold in the ground if that is what Inel’s 43-101 shows – or is that a fool’s question because of the need for assumptions like ‘grade…’ – or is it reasonable to use Skeena’s numbers and just adjust the volume to get a ‘ballpark’ number? – obviously I’m just trying to think about potential impact on share price – I like to try to think ahead a bit, realizing things will change, maybe greatly.
We are having fun, and it has just begun – so, in short, lots more excitement yet to come – probably even before any announcement of results starting in September/October!
IMHO DYODD