RE:RE:RE:How are they going to pay for Greenstone?Ya, that makes sense to have a massive increase in AISC on Santa Luz just due to input prices (diesel, etc.). The recovery rate risk of the mine is huge.....to my knowledge the reason the mine shut down previously was that the recovery rates of the technology used were terrible so they had really high AISC. The technology they are using now is different and has been tested and shown a massive difference in recovery rates, but it's still not a guarentee that it will work on the deposit at a large scale. So until all that information comes out (recovery rate, AISC, commercial construction declared), then the mine is a really big risk.
Definitely some interesting comments about Greenstone's contingency and you very well could be right that it could be low, especially given the construction risks of a major project. The market is also definitely worried that they won't be able to pay for it.
The AISC story isn't helped by RDM which is now, likely, a breakeven project for this year with any care and maintenance costs they had to incur. That really hurts the cashflow situation. These government bodies are screwing up all over the place delaying permits and have no idea how big of an effect it can have on a business. It's sad.
The recession comment is tricky, because a recession would initially be really bad for gold and then likely really good for gold is the government goes back to QE and lower interest rates (higher negative real rates). Even if the government pauses interest rate hikes that would be super bullish for gold, but they aren't likely to do that soon unless there's some really poor economic data that is released.
At the next call I wouldn't be surprised to see them suspend all other drilling activities happening at other mines and try to cut some other costs in the short term that can be delayed. It would be crazy to keep spending on exploration drilling when the company is really going to need cash. That is unless they somehow are able to find a way to increase their available debt.
Once again, this is a tough year to be a shareholder. I still believe in the company, but wow it's been painful. What I hate the most is that no updates have been released yet. They haven't released a revised timeline for commercial production at Santa Luz and that's the biggest concern for me. If they had their ducks in a row, they would have, IMO, declared they are x number of weeks behind schedule. But silence on that topic, to me, isn't a good sign. Especially since it was suppossed to be up and running by the end of June.