Burkina Faso, Brazil, Ghana & H1N1
- New Planetary Prospect: Xtra-motivated
- Teck and Juniors: INV.V
- BioCryst: 95% of hospitalized flues are H1N1
- Endeavour Financial: Burkina Faso's Etruscan
- Toronto town this weekend ...
FLYING TO TORONTO –And yes, I prefer coach
. I prefer it when those well meaning but fussy Air Canada attendants leave me be in the rear of the bus – that’s the truth!
I am going with bullets today (Thursday). Then back Tuesday.
- First off, this from Honolulu fund manager, Stanford U. geo-doctorate and trusted source Paul Zweng: Brazil Rating Raised to Investment Grade at Moody’s … strong economic and financial resilience, Moody’s said … Brazil’s currency up 29 percent vs. America’s dollar thus far this year … (oh yeah, that’s second to the South African rand – the carry trade I guess.) So why is this actionable? Dr. Zweng, former CEO of Mongolia’s QGX Ltd. , tells the tale of one INV, a lonely junior gold and copper miner in Brazil. “The company is International Nickel Ventures (TSX: T.INV). Its Itapora project, the one in that recent press release, is not of interest to me,” Dr. Z tells me this morning. “INV did a deal which leaves them with only 20% or 30% of the project. What is exciting to me is the JV deal with Teck for the Rio Novo project in the Carajás of Brazil (that’s an IOCG system with Cu and Au, but little-to-no U) … and the Cu-Ag deposit in Namibia.The district is the size of the Zambian Copper Belt. Teck was crazy to JV these projects—these are monster projects.” More? “I believe Teck is entering into JVs and divesting assets because of its weak balance sheet (high debt). INV has a strong balance sheet relative to most Canadian juniors, maybe $16 million Canadian cash as of 30 June ‘09 filing. What is also attractive about Rio Novo (Brazil) and Kaoko (Namibia) is that both are sound, workable mining jurisdictions. Low political risk.” And more? Dr. Zweng continues, “Did you see today’s news that Alamos bought two gold deposits in Turkey from Teck (60%) and Fronteer Development Group? My hunch is that this sale was motivated by Teck for similar reasons—the balance sheet no longer supports the advancement of new projects. It needs more cash to offset high debt levels.” There you go. I do not own the shares here at home and we here at Ticker Trax are just starting to look at this one.
- Xtra Gold Resources Corp. (OTO: XTGR) is
Planetary Prospect No. 9 for subscribers. Please examine this and future reports and consider shares of the XTGR ticker over-the-counter junior immediately at any price beneath $1 U.S. (Don’t say I did not tell you.) ‘O-bruni o-bruni’ is still in my ears, hombres. I will be purchasing XTGR shares this week at a higher price than those who elected in Tuesday at Wednesday at 75 cents U.S. (I like it like that – keeps me out of trouble.) After my time in Ghana this past week or 9 days, I am over the ridge on James Longshore’s Xtra Gold and its soon-to-be-released second round of drilling a concession on the Kibi Gold Belt that might become a 3 million-ounce or more gold resource. (Please read the full and photo-ready report on Xtra Gold, and our tour references to diligentKeegan Resources, in the password-secure archives ofTicker Trax™. All photos by Thom Calandra – even the ones of Thom Calandra! So who votes for larger fonts?) Also --Please see: Ghana Exclusive on Stockhouse.)
- Endeavour Financial (TSX: T.EDV)’s Neil Woodyer held the merchant bank’s call today to explain its backing of Etruscan Resources (TSX: T.EET), a gold miner in Burkina Faso, West Africa. Etruscan also has properties in Ghana and elsewhere. The company is a shrinking act, owing to its poor relations with banks, a more or less idiotic gold hedging strategy and its evaporating capital. “The bank has Etruscan in a corner,” Endeavour’s founder and Monaco-hopping Mr. Woodyer said. Solution? A $48 million debt restructuring plan. As we recall, Endeavour Financial, which is a Planetary Prospect of this service, had employed consultant and successful banker Frank Giustra of his new Fiore Capital to raise $400 million or so, package it into a limited partnership with Endeavour as managing partner, and then cobble together distressed gold miners. Mr. Giustra, who has my Ticker Trax support in his brilliantly conceived if sometimes mysterious ventures, found the Middle East and other areas of potent capital were not yet willing to push the gold money button. FG was on the call, which is recorded and available here. He said a few words. I won’t go into all the details – they are available in an accompanying slide show at the conference call link. Endeavour will be sinking $43 million into Etruscan’s common shares at a nice discount to the current price. Endeavour Financial will appoint board members, including FG and Mr. Woodyer. The new team will attempt to unwind the gold hedge contracts, patch relations with bankers and kick-start again what looks like a promising and producing gold mine in the Youga Gold Belt of Burkina Faso.
Toronto: Saturday & Sunday
-- I will be speaking this coming weekend at Joe Martin and Howard Fitch’s Cambridge House resources show in Toronto. The topic is Canadian Moly, Ghana Gold & H1N1 – Our Own District 9. I also will hold a no-question-is-too-outrageous workshop session for Ticker Trax subscribers and those who are considering Ticker Trax. Please see: Toronto in September. Or follow Cambridge House on Twitter. I have four spots at the show and a booth with Stockhouse. Swing by and definitely check out the workshop, where we will have some material for wealth seekers AND A SURPRISE OR TWO.
Name: Toronto Resource Investment Conference
Time: Saturday & Sunday September 26-27, 2009
Place: Metro Toronto Convention Centre, North Building 255 Front Street West
The 2009 Toronto Resource Investment Conference has a fee of $20 to attend but waives the fee if you use Promotion Code CHT9. I am so looking forward to this show, even if the Blue Jays let me down this year! North American baseball … can’t live with it or without it.
Planetary Prospects
Nearly all of our (now 9) Planetary Prospects are in green. I own them all, except for Xtra Gold Resources (OTO: XTGR) at present. I expect to own them all until I see fundamental events that disprove my on-the-scene reporting -- and this includes BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BCRX), Great Panther Resources (TSX: T.GPR), moly wonder Avanti Mining (TSX: V.AVT ), Great Basin Gold (TSX: T.GBG>r Trax subscribers and those who are considering Ticker Trax. Please see: Toronto in September. Or follow Cambridge House on Twitter. I have four spots at the show and a booth with Stockhouse. Swing by and definitely check out the workshop, where we will have some material for wealth seekers AND A SURPRISE OR TWO.
Name: Toronto Resource Investment Conference
Time: Saturday & Sunday September 26-27, 2009
Place: Metro Toronto Convention Centre, North Building 255 Front Street West
The 2009 Toronto Resource Investment Conference has a fee of $20 to attend but waives the fee if you use Promotion Code CHT9. I am so looking forward to this show, even if the Blue Jays let me down this year! North American baseball … can’t live with it or without it.
Planetary Prospects
Nearly all of our (now 9) Planetary Prospects are in green. I own them all, except for Xtra Gold Resources (OTO: XTGR) at present. I expect to own them all until I see fundamental events that disprove my on-the-scene reporting -- and this includes BioCryst Pharmaceuticals (NASDAQ: BCRX), Great Panther Resources (TSX: T.GPR), moly wonder Avanti Mining (TSX: V.AVT ), Great Basin Gold (TSX: T.GBG), whose Nevada tour I recently completed, Endeavour Silver (TSX: T.EDR) and the rest.
- Candente Resources (TSX: T.DNT) is undergoing what looks like a transaction in Mexico that could be significant. I expect a major alteration in the company’s Mexico gold and silver venture. I am as well a believer in the longstanding Peruvian copper discovery operation the company has built in the past decade. Ms. Freeze told me the negotiations in Mexico are continuing but declined to be more specific about El Oro or other developments. “This has been really hard on all of us here,” she told me. “Cross your fingers for us.”
- Great Basin Gold’s tour of the Hollister and Esmeralda properties two weeks ago is still in my notebook. Great Basin (TSX: T.GBG) is trading at an approximate 42 percent discount to its mid-sized looming gold producing peers … only because it has one foot at a second mine in South Africa and is tangled up with that darn volatile rand currency. CEO Ferdi Dippenaar will be at the New Orleans show in October, as will I and Mr. Longshore of Xtra Gold, which I calculate -- based on trench, soil sample and drilling data, core samples and numerous Ticker Trax interviews and on-site trekking – as having an even-Steven shot at becoming Africa’s next owner of a 3 million-ounce (or more) resource. GBG, by the way, gets PC credits for hosting a grimy and dusty, hot as-baked-potato tour/stinky bus/loved-it-to-the-moon-especially-the-fried-liver-Basque-sweetbreads tour with more women than ever I have witnessed on a tour. There were at least six, I believe -- mostly writers and sell-side analysts Canadienne. Bravo! All of the women were faster up and down the hills, even underground, than I was. (Photo above.)
- Please note: BioCryst Pharma (NASDAQ: BCRX) is receiving a contract extension from the Department of Health & Human Services; thus, continued development and production of peramivir for influenza is assured. We here at home continue to hold our 62,000 shares here at home and expect more developments that will add to stockpiling of the antiviral compound inside and outside of North America. Call me Thom, but we sold none of our shares at $10 or $11 or $12 – and I were to, you as subscribers would get the nod days before I hit any button (Ticker Trax policy). I encourage subscribers to read the July issue of The New England Journal of Medicine for perspective on the history of H1N1 strains. Matt Krantz at USA Today, a former employer of mine, had a nice and neat look at the situation for influenza companies. Please see: Article. Compelling reason to look at the shares at the $8 level? More than 95 % of all hospitalized or emergency-room seeking influenza patients are being diagnosed with the new H1N1 strain, which by the way in various models has been around for 91 years at least. Peramivir is a potent anti-viral for hospitalized influenza patients.
That is all for now. Off to T-town. If you have the time Saturday evening and get the National Geographic Channel, my sister, film producer and writer Stevi Calandra, and my first-cousin, Broadway musician and film score artist Peter Calandra, will see their “Unlikely Animal Friends” documentary aired in a North American premiere at 8 p.m. ET. The one-hour film features some unusual animal partnerships, chimps, lionesses, geologists -- some with happy endings and others, rip-tear-bloody-hell, not … so … happy.
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