Shock treatment
posted on
Apr 14, 2010 11:39PM
Creating shareholder wealth by advancing gold projects through the exploration and mine development cycle.
I'm still in shock over the low resource estimate. According to the Tech report a total of 66,522 m were drilled on the Hercules project up to October 25, 2008 and 17,100 m were drilled in 2009 ( Nov. 27 2009 press release). That gives a minimum number of 83,622 m drilled on Hercules at an estimated cost (using $ 200/m all in cost from the Tech report ) of $ 16.7 million. So what value has been achieved with that effort? Taking the capped total of 131,350 oz at $ 100/oz gives $ 13.1 million, so a ballpark estimate suggests the drilling has not paid for itself yet. The Hercules project is over capitalized and needs a lot more resource to make it economically viable. Even though the numbers were split between indicated and inferred that's very little consolation. In my opinion IR should not have said the resource estimate would be inferred numbers only for at least three reasons. It material information improperly released, it was share price negative and , as it turns out, completely wrong. I will look at the full resource document when it's posted on Sedar. I want to see what portions of the Golden Mile and Lucky Strike zones were included and , more importantly, what areas with good intercepts need more drilling to prove up additional resource. If all of the the high grade shoots in the Golden Mile and Lucky Strike are all included in the existing resource estimate, then what is the nature and purpose of the current drilling? Is it really development drilling or essentially exploratory? The March 9 presentation says $ 28.9 mil working capital but with all the drilling I estimate about $ 25 miliion left in the till. Add my resource value of $ 13.1 mil and 125 million shares FD to get a share value of about 30.5 cents. I don't know if the method is correct, but it does agree with the market valuation, which is really all that counts. We are currently trading at about the liquidation value of the company so there's little downside for anyone buying now. We have to hope West Millenium or Milestone come through in the short term because Hercules needs alot more drilling.