High Conviction: An Inexpensive Miner With Unique Business Model
posted on
Mar 16, 2010 08:15AM
Edit this title from the Fast Facts Section
this looks interesting
http://seekingalpha.com/article/193617-high-conviction-an-inexpensive-miner-with-unique-business-model
What is your highest conviction stock position - long or short? Our long position in Virginia Mines (VGMNF.PK) (Toronto: VGQ). I know many Americans prefer to use the U.S. exchanges, but personally I try to avoid the pink sheets whenever I can. Virginia, for example, is far more liquid in Toronto; as I write, it has a 5 cent spread in Toronto, versus a 16 cent spread in the U.S., where the daily turnover is also far lower. Virginia is a resource exploration company. It minimizes the three biggest risks in this notoriously high-potential/high-risk endeavor. First, one of the biggest risks facing the exploration and mining sector is political (including social and environmental). Virginia is focused on the Canadian province of Quebec, which typically ranks at the very top of low-risk jurisdictions for mining.
Virginia is very inexpensive. It has two primary assets on which a hard value can be put. The cash, of course (and some marketable securities), but a royalty it holds on a property it sold a few years ago to Goldcorp (GG), one of North America's largest goldmining companies. The resource on this property was just raised 77% to 9.4 million ounces. The royalty has a NAV, on a discounted cash-flow basis, at current gold prices of upwards of C$130 million. That and the cash alone is in excess of the market cap ($167 million). So we have all the gold resources Virginia has discovered on other properties, its 100% "ready-for-development" zinc property, and numerous joint ventures and wholly owned properties. It is difficult to put a valuation on an exploration property, but Virginia has hard assets to back up its share price.