The More Things Change the More the Results Remain the Same!One cannot but see the same pattern of what happened about 10 years ago -
Is it possible that the Wyloo story will soon be that of Cliffs? Goncalves statement rings prescient to our age. If Canada is to succeed it needs to get its act together....and soon.
New Cliffs CEO sees 'zero hope,' no asset sale in Ontario's Ring of Fire
Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. CEO Lourenco Goncalves: 'I don’t believe under my watch, and I plan to stay [alive] for the next 50 years… that the Ring of Fire will be developed'
Peter Koven
Published Oct 28, 2014 on Financial Post
https://financialpost.com/commodities/mining/new-cliffs-ceo-sees-zero-hope-no-asset-sale-in-ontarios-ring-of-fire
The new chief executive of Cliffs Natural Resources Inc. doubts that Ontario’s “Ring of Fire” will be developed for decades to come, or that anyone will buy his company’s rich chromite assets in the region in the near future.
Lourenco Goncalves, 55, said in an interview Tuesday that he has “zero hope” that a solution will be reached to spur on development in the region anytime soon.
“I don’t believe under my watch, and I plan to stay [alive] for the next 50 years… that the Ring of Fire will be developed,” he said.
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A handful of junior mining companies, including KWG Resources Inc. and Noront Resources Ltd., are more optimistic and are interested in buying Cliffs’ Ring of Fire properties. But according to Mr. Goncalves, they all have the same problem: “They do not have any money.”
His comments have to be discouraging for the Ontario government, which made the Ring of Fire the centerpiece of its northern development plans. To date, Cleveland-based Cliffs is the only large mining company to take a serious interest in the area.
The Ring of Fire, located in the remote James Bay Lowlands, was discovered amid much fanfare in 2007. It is thought to hold about $60-billion of chromite, base metals and other minerals. After a hoard of junior companies staked claims in the area, Cliffs spent about $500-million to build a land position with vast chromite holdings.
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The company has come to regret that decision. It suspended the project last year after failing to reach key agreements with the Ontario government and First Nations over infrastructure and other issues.
Mr. Goncalves is of the view that these challenges should have been resolved long ago.
“The Ring of Fire is a remote land with no railroad, no road, nothing,” he said. “Without the infrastructure, there’s nothing we can do.”
He became CEO over the summer, following a bitter proxy fight that overhauled Cliffs’ board. His strategy is to focus on Cliffs’ highly profitable U.S. iron ore operations and to divest almost everything else, undoing the company’s ill-fated expansion strategy of the last several years.
Among the assets up for sale are Cliffs’ chromite concessions in the Ring of Fire. While Mr. Goncalves doubts they will be sold anytime soon, he does not mind holding onto the assets as Cliffs has no liabilities associated with them. The company took a US$254-million writedown on its Ring of Fire holdings in the third quarter.
A much bigger problem for Mr. Goncalves is the Bloom Lake iron ore mine in Quebec, which Cliffs bought for $4.9-billion in 2011. The mine is unprofitable at current iron prices, and needs an investment of more than US$1-billion in order to double production and get costs down. He is in talks with three potential partners to share the cost of the expansion, he said, but it is a “toss-up” on whether they all agree to do so.
If all three firms commit by the end of the year, Cliffs will go ahead with the expansion and sell them the iron ore output from the mine. If they don’t, he said the company would give up on Bloom Lake and shut it down. That would be difficult because of a take-or-pay rail contract tied to Bloom Lake.
“Going away from [Bloom Lake] is not deleting it on a computer. It’s a pretty complicated process,” Mr. Goncalves said.
Regardless, investors believe Cliffs is back on the right track. The stock jumped 22% on Tuesday after the company reported an adjusted third quarter profit of US$33-million, or US21¢ a share, which beat expectations.
“Cliffs had a solid Q3 despite weak market prices for iron ore and met coal,” RBC Capital Markets analyst Fraser Phillips said in a note.