September 26, 2014
[Plus: COLT Resources update ... shares halted ahead of events: See below]
TORONTO — “IT’S A DARK TIME IN OUR BUSINESS.”
Pat DiCapo, Toronto financier: “A major discovery will bring greed back into the markets.”
Mr. DiCapo, a 40-something lifelong banker and markets person, was into Aurelian in Ecuador when three miners alone were kicking around down there.
By July 2008, when Kinross used stock to purchase Aurelian and its 14 million-ounce gold discovery, 105 were there.
Reminds us of Colombia, Ghana. Nevada. Every jurisdiction in the world got papered over from 2008 or so through 2011. Most of the newbies turn out to be too late, too poor, too dumb or just unlucky.
Mr. DiCapo these days turns his attention to Continental Gold in Colombia. Its Buritica in Antioquia, as most agree, is one of the top three or four high-grade gold deposits in the world. The stock, CNL in Canada, is getting hammered these days, just like everything else in resources. Mr. DiCapo, by the way, spoke in a one-on-one at CanVest, the Cambridge House conference this week in Toronto. In conversation with Tommy Humphreys of CEO.ca.
“Let me know what Pat is saying,” says Robert W. Allen, whose Grupo de Bullet in Colombia owns about 18 percent of Continental’s shares. (At last look, anyway.)
For all the time I have been to Colombia and to Buritica, I never have owned CNL shares. Gorgeous project — underground mine, insanely high grades. Some $80 million of cash in hand to get the tunnel from the mine to the processing facility in place.
But awful headlines about wildcat miners blowing themselves to bits with gunpowder around the concession or adjacent to it. That’s Colombia these days, and the military, local governments, regional officials, the police and all the well meaning NGOs in the Latin American galaxy are not able to heal those wounds.
Subsistence mining has been around a long time — this is me talking now, not Pat DiCapo. Mr. DiCapo is a longtime backer of CNL. I’m a longtime observer.
The documentary film MARMATO is set for release (showing in Toronto Oct. 1 but debuted in Park City at Sundance in January 2014). MARMATO is about Gran Colombia Gold (TSX: GCM, Stock Forum)(a continuing question mark on faliling finances and corporate governance) and its predecessors and that mountain town’s generational longing for gold, the company’s sometimes half-hearted efforts to help, and the remaining environmental, social and physical disaster that Colombia’s flaship gold mountain has become.
Buritica is about as 180-degrees flip flop to El Marmato as Cambodia is to Singapore. Stuart Moller, the Grupo de Bullet geologist whose team gets the credit for the underground complex, might go down in modern history as one of the world’s smartest geologists. First, Mark Moseley-Williams’ Continental Gold must get final permitting from Colombia, a country that has disappointed resources investors time and again since I first returned to Colombia in 2007.
I was there back then of course to see El Marmato. I still go there maybe once every four times I visit Colombia these days. But going to that country, even with its friendly people, its lush vegetation and its fountain-of-youth features (food, air, water, art and so on) is getting harder.
Do I believe Buritica (which has an accent on the a) will go into production in the next three years? Yes. Because it is underground, and because, as is the case at mining sites across the nation, the parent company’s operators are the BEST THING for the region. The operators, day to day, are doing more to police their concessions, to school the children, to show workers there is an alternative to explosives, extortion and coffee beans. Alas, when government enters the Antioquia landscape, the entire country for that matter, the muck of bureaucracy follows.
Mr. DiCapo acknowledges “the big risk is permitting.” For a banker and investor with a sizeable stake in this one, DiCapo appears willing to explain the risk equation. So rare for a large owner of shares.
[By the way, he loves lithium here -- Lithium Americas -- and graphite -- Mason Graphite (TSX: V.LLG, Stock Forum.]
Mr. DiCapo’s other top choices are Torrex and Pretium (TSX: PVG, Stock Forum). Sorry I do not have time for all the tickers. More to come.
Notes: SmallCap Power will have some video of me talking up Calibre Mining (TSX: V.CXB, Stock Forum) and two other names here at the CanVest conference.
Seeing a lot of familiar faces, and a respectable turnout of almost 1,000 for this two-day affair here in Toronto. I am pleasantly surprised. Just ran into Gerry McCarvill of Norvista at a club downtown. He is working on several ivesting ventures that have little to do with mining and more to do with technology and astute London stock-pickers — two women, he says. Gerry and Bob Allen of Grupo de Bullet are discussing their creation in Colombia called Solvista Gold (SVV) — a former TCR member and one of whose shares I still own a whack.
Based on reporting here, I would be buying — and will be adding to — my Carlisle Gold (TSX: CGJ, Stock Forum)(Abraham Drost), my Abitibi Royalties (TSX: V.RZZ, Stock Forum)(Glenn Mullan and Ian Ball), my Kaizen Discovery (TSX: V.KZD, Stock Forum)(Matthew Hornor) and my Angkor Gold (TSX: V.ANK, Stock Forum)(Mike Weeks). Looking at adding to my Nulegacy Gold AHEAD OF NEVADA ASSAYS.
Great to see some of the Inter-Citic folks — Anne Mitchell and Stephen Lautens. Anne still works for the gold mine developer, whose China property — DACHANG — sold to the Chinese several years ago.
I am concerned, deeply concerned, about an accelerating Ebola virus in west Africa. I am awaiting answers from operators in Burkina Faso and elsewhere — such as True Gold (TSX: V.TGM, Stock Forum) and Mark O’Dea’s team — about how the careening virus could delay projects.
Right now, my only insurance is not a vaccine, but a treatment developer: BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BCRX, Stock Forum). But you know that.
Finally, all eyes on Gran Colombia Gold, the misfiring, poorly managed gold miner that faces an early November interest rate payment to holders of its denominated notes. I still own my common consolidated-to-nothing shares, alas. I regret ever getting involved. Can’t wait to see the Mark Grieco MARMATO film, parts of which I believe have filtered out in other forms and I might have seen a la National Geographic or something. I am told the film’s final production bucks came through crowd funding sources. … And speaking of film, I have no idea where the Bre-X film we reported 9 months ago is today. I have read the screenplay and seen the trailer. Filming was thought to start in Kuala Lumpur or Malaysia, I believe. Crowd funding? No idea.
Colt Resources: Portugal In Motion
Colt Resources? Shares halted Friday. This has been a story, and to be honest, I am not sure what exactly will happen Monday, when shares start trading — hopefully.
I had another long conversation with a connected individual of the battered Portugal prospector — an ailing member of our TCR 6. I am saddened to see the shake-up there and continue to state: There had best be a significant development at the Portugal miner-wanna-be of tungsten and gold IN THE NEXT 3 WEEKS. I hold. I hope we see an event worthy of the two properties on Monday. If speculation is correct, Colt Resources (TSX: V.GTP, Stock Forum) and management team might be dealing one of its properties to a new partner. Or getting liquidity from a re-harvested piece of its Middle East gambit earlier in the year.
– Thom Calandra
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