As mentioned in my last post, Peter Ball is interested in answering about 4 questions during the conference call, prior to the regular (open) question period part of the call. There will still be a regular Q&A part of the call, for individual callers to ask questions. This opportunity here provides an avenue to ensure key questions as asked, just in case any of the key questions are missed by individual callers during the regular Q&A session. Post your specific questions on here. I will forward the most popular questions to Peter via email next Monday or Tuesday. Of note, it is better is the questions are specific. It will help me when it comes time to consolidate the questions and it will increase the chances of the company providing an answers (the better they are able to understand the question).
This initiative was not my idea. It is something that Peter Ball requested. It is a proactive effort by the company to improve the information flow during the conference call. Although they encourage as much participation as possible on the conference call, they recognize that not everyone will be able to participate on the conference call. Let`s take advantage of this opportunity and come up with 4 good questions.
57 comments:
What are the current obsticals preventing CMM from getting production out of BD .. and North Slope. .. and when are these issues expected to be resolved..
.. and what tonnage is planned out of both BD and North Slope... at what ore grade
Are we on track for 2011 production estimate .. or will we be revising that down
cusemMy quastions are:-
1) Can we expect production tonnage to reach 2000tpd by Q3'11 with BD and NW in full swing by then?
2) Has the Co find the long awaited CEO? If not, what is the latest situation?
3) Is the Co planning to seek listing in the Torento exchange and move away from the venture bourse?
4) What, if there is any, is the exploration plan for San Juan?
What are their future plans regarding informing investors of their progress?
It's been well over a month now since we've had any word from them. Zero news releases. Zero presentation updates.
is CMM keeping its main office in Blaine WA or thinking about moving somewhere else?
Why is gold breaking new highs every day while CMM can't break 50 cents?
In the past the company has continued to over promise and under perform. Currently little news has been reported regarding the appointment of a new President, exploration work on the various properties, and production updates. What and when can we expect significant news here.
I predict Century Mining will be the very last stock to rise. Long after all the major, mid, jr. Producers have their fill, long after every exploration dog and OTC penny pig stock have appreciated 5000%, when the masses wake up to gold trading at $6800 per oz.....then only then will some cash dribble in to CMM....and the stock will run to 80 cents before crashing again because the ride will be over!
Anonymous
Go find that punch bag in the basement please.....
It seem that all focus on San Jaun has been lost with so much going on with Lamaque.When the new Head exploration guy was hired alot of statements were made but that was along time ago.With all that land in Peru,what is the exploration plan down there?
All I care is WHEN will CMM follow price of gold and rise in the markets. We are here to make money, so my question to Peter would be when will my investment in CMM bring some fruit?
All that is required to make this possible is up to the management. So management, please, when will you have all in place so that we will se our investment bring us profit rather then waste of time?
I would be very interested to hear some good reason why the regular release of company information - monthly reports, etc. have been done away with. Century is a public company, after all.
Does the company plan to pay us all giant dividends if the share price keeps being suppressed after commercial production is achieved?
When should we expect to have a new CEO?
When do we see commercial production beginning?
Question:
Can we convince Peggy to come back?
LOL...Been pretty boring since she
left the helm.
Chillby, I agree with your assessment. CMM had very good share price appreciation earlier this year (Jan-May) when the monthly reports/presentations could be accessed. Then there was the stock halt and subsequent plumment 50% off discount!
I understand other PM stocks also had severe corrections June/July/August but now all have recovered EXCEPT for CMM.V
Even penny plays like USA.V (US Silver) 15c in September jaggernaut over CMM now at 60c!
Gold now 25% higher than in April, CMM supposedly producing and pouring ore now....yet shareprice 1/2 of what it was in April. WHERE IS THE BEEF???
I think fault lies with the management and lack of communication.
Ask Peter when the monthly presentations on CMM will resume. There is no reason target updates on both mines (grades, tonnes, etc) cannot be provided to Shareholders. Investors like to see progress and not be kept in the dark!
Weary Canuck
roxy, I wasn't sad to see Peggy go, but I am sad to see that the void created has not been filled. One thing about Peggy was that she was a promoter - this management seems to be indifferent to share price performance.
The day before Peggy resigned, CMM closed at 47 cents and gold closed at $1168. Gold is now $220/oz higher and CMM's share price is 1 cent lower which really is an indictment of management. Our gold in the ground increased in value by $1.3 BILLION and we have nothing to show for it - a depressing situation. I believe over this period selling pressure from creditors that received shares for debt has capped the price which in itself has caused retail shareholders to move their money to any other appreciating gold mining or exploration company that has a fraction of our asset value which has contributed to the poor share price performance.
This non-performance of the share price has to be addressed in the conference call. We need someone to lay out the vision and future plans for the company in three main areas:
Corporate - Timing of new CEO hiring, new independent Chairman, office relocation, potential name change, TSX listing, etc.
Operational - Path and timing for declaration of Commercial production and the size of the contribution of the three mining areas - Lamaque, Bedard Dyke and North Wall and their ultimate contributions to 2,000 tpd.
Exploration and updated Reserve and Resource Numbers - We've been promised updated numbers for a couple of years now based on data input into the mining and modelling software and we have additional BD drilling results. In this environment gold really is "Gold!" and we need to convert inferred ounces into economic ounces. Unfortunately Century seems to be content to meet a regulatory deadline of the next annual report in 2011. On June 2 the new VP of Geology told us he would have a Strategic Exploration Plan out in 90 days.
Keeping promises has never been a strong suit with Century. The new management's solution seems to be don't make any promises.
Patience is a virtue. I have been watching CMM for 6 months and have been an owner for 2 weeks. I'm in it for the long run as I believe the fundamentals are sound. I will of course regularly reassess as further information becomes available. I'm confident that if you hold on your patience will be abundantly rewarded when compared to other plays within the sector.
After reading all the potential questions here
I'm depressed!!
Anonymous your absolutely right.
Since I invested in June all I've heard here ,is that don't worry, as soon as the quarterly's are announced,you'll see a spike
No
Then I heard as soon as the summer is over ,there will be a spike
No
Then ,as soon as the PP is filled there will be a spike
No
And now I hear,wait until afer Nov 15th announcement
BULLSHIT
My question to Peter is MAN UP,be straight with us
Listen to the "whining" let me get you some cheese
Invested in June and have not realized 100% gain yet ? cry me a river.
Take a look at YNG .. a company very similar to CMM .. this company too had problems : had to shut down operations due to enviro issues and raise a bunch of cash to get production back online . production similar to CMM 2011 estimates.
The stock was at 20 cents .. as soon as they reached steady state production it doubled overnight .. a few months later the stock is at 90 cents.
CMM has had problems getting rock to the mill ... which is "expected" by anyone who knows anything about mining..
The BD and North slope will open over the next 3 months .. production will spike .. and then the share price can lift off.
Right now they are paying 200 workers to produce 600 tonnes a day when that many is enough to do 1500 to 2000 per day ..
so labor costs are running 3 times higher than they should be.
Sell and move on to another stock if you are in it for a quick buck .. at some point .. in the next 3 months this companys production is going to at least double ..
With this news "blackout"
there is the risk of leaks giving some unfair advantage.
Price action looks phoney or are investors hung up on the
lack of ceo?
Tim
There does seem to be an endless amount of patience and "just you wait" attitude among us shareholders. I for one am sick of being told that "our time is coming" and "Century is a 5 bagger" when the stock price doesn't budge with gold at $1380.
I understand just as much as anyone else that starting up a gold mine and production takes time and has its hurdles to overcome. But surely the market isn't blind to CMM. It's not like it's a diamond that no one knows about.
There must be something going on. There must be some information that common shareholders don't have access to that big institutions do, because on the surface (in presentations, corporate fact sheets and press releases) this company clearly looks like a sure thing. But yet the share price does nothing and there's an endless supply of sellers between $0.45 and $0.50.
We need concrete answers from management. Why is there no communication between mgmt and shareholders? Why is it so terrible to brief shareholders on monthly production updates if there's nothing to hide? Why does mgmt seem so disinterested in the performance of the share price? Why has there not been a new exploration plan announced?
Why is this company so frusterating?
As the wise man Mike has stated
" the BD and north slope will open over the next 3 month's...production will spike....and then the share will lift off"
Where have i heard this broken record before???
--- Question to Ask ---
Due to only 25% of shares being for retail investors, does this give you the right to manipulate pricing and give no reward on retail investment so that as things get better you will frustrate all investors and swallow there shares and then make stock price jump up in the multiples.
It is frustrating ..
Its frustrating when you hire a competent 3rd party engineering firm to do the geotechnical report.. required for permitting .. send the report into the Govt .. wait who knows how long for the Good for nothing govt workers to have time to review the report ..
and the Govt says "we need more stuff done" Now the engineering firm (who is busy as hell right now) has to send out a team of technicians .. to do more sampling .. (one to two week at least) lab work .. (1-2 weeks to get results back)
Then the engineering firm has to analyse the results .. and then write up the new report .. (at least a week or two)
When I worked for AMEC .. all reports had to be sent to another office for review once completed .. wait at least 3 or 4 days for comments back .. apply those comments to the report ..
Report is send back into the Govt
Govt ( huge unknown 3-6 weeks ?)
Now you are 3 months behind .. because of a finicky beaurocrat ..or an oversight from an engineering contractor
and what is true about most beaurocrats .. is doubly so in Quebec
Hopefully "fingers crossed" that bullshit is done with .. and they are taking rock out of the BD as we speak.
The "inside info" is that there are delays due to "permitting"
precious metals fund managers understand these and will likely wait until the "permitting" bugaboo is removed before committing money to this stock
What is management supposed to release ? "These idiots will not give us our permit" ? .. they basically stated this .. when they said there are "permitting issues"
these things get resolved .. most times .. .. It is the "most times" that is the wildcard preventing fund managers from jumping in
One thing we could ask Peter .. and perhaps get an answer right now .. is
Are the permitting issues handled
I agree about asking if the permit issues are resolved -- excellent question.
Just talked to Peter:
The permitting issues are completed .. they are just waiting for approval which is expected any day .. In the meantime however they can take 20,000 tonnes out and 30,000 of development .. so the approval .. which may be here already (he is in Germany) is not a problem.
The other day production to the mill was 1350 .. the day before that 1100 .. 1150 the day before that.
They have been mining the BD for 3 weeks now .. some good days ..some not so good
They were running with 1 of the low profile Jumbos .. but in the last two weeks another has arrived and one they were having problems with is back in action .. so now they have 3 fully operational Jumbo's working
They have started to enter the North slope .. maybe 60 tonnes per day .. very beginning phases .. should be early first quarter to get this up (normally a 2 month process or more)
It will take some time yet to get to steady state .. but they are getting there.
Can we elect Mike to be the new CEO?
This guy gets things done.
Nice job.
Hi Mike
U are solid as a rock. To me what U had just brought up in your post are important positive info giving me a long awaited updating on my understanding of progresses made in the mining fronts. Many thanks
As per Mike's info posted, it seems that to know what is going on in the mine fronts and perhaps in other matters are not difficult to come by. My impression is that though officially the Co does not issue monthly report, Peter is able and willing to supply those info we may wish to know. It seems that all we need to do is ask.Perhaps with a little work, we may get our 'monthly report' via Peter by talking to him.
Thank you Mike. You have brought much more confidence in why I hold CMM. I think we will see sp react favourly after Nov. 15th and eventually a new CEO. Then we will be looking at over a buck. Need to be patient.
And I don't think there is any ulterior motive from Finski or Scola to keep the price down for a take over. If that were their intentions then they would have never allowed those 2 Private Placements.
Good Luck to All
Well I'm trying to put my finger on this.Peter is now answering question via cell-phone, why have a question period on the 15th. Seems we know the answers as of today. Just trying to figure out what the 15th is really about.
Would like to extend another thx and good job to Mike. I also spoke to Peter very briefly yesterday and he echoed the same info that Mike stated. This is not a widely followed equity, so I expect the street to be "asleep" on the progress until it is announced officially.
The permitting is a non-issue at this point and even if it does not come in the next few days, it is imminent.
Let's not forget CMM HAS proven to be able to ramp up a profitable mine to maturity through our Peru operations. To the person who stated Peru is often forgotten, I definitely agree.
Let's also not forget we are less than 7 months from the start of production, so some hiccups were bound to happen.
To those upset and complaining, I understand how you feel, but at some point you have to realize that if you were looking for a 2 day, 2 week or 2 month swing trade, this might not be it. Also - If you were looking for a mature mine that moves exactly with the price of gold, then this is not it either.
Revaluation plays like CMM hold the most rewards for those who hold or accumulate through ramp-up to maturity. I'm confident over the next 18 months just the simple accumulate and hold strategy here will outperform all the other smaller moves out there and those who are darting in and out.
RE
Mike, YNG has 600M market cap...CMM can't even seem to break 200M. what's wrong with this picture?
thanks for the permit info. It makes sense. I can only hope this means production on target and sharePrice closer to $2.
Frustrating to see others get the Swiss cheese while CMM holders get the holes
WearyCanuck
real_economics,
Where are you getting the "7 months to production" figure. Most accounts, on this blog included, have us declaring commercial production early in 2011, so why do you say it will be June?
No imho the questions miss the mark - follow the money....
In order to get to the 100,000 opy level they originally stated they needed a shaft to haul the ore out of the ground. The rehab of the Sigma Shaft was delayed for a couple of years because it had a hefty price tag and they figured they could pay for it from operation cash. THAT was Peggy's biggest problem - she always thought that she could pay for the next thing with Operating Profits - and unfortunately she or her team was a terrible operator.
So the key things to know are:
1. How many stoppes are needed at the old u/g works to get to 100,000? How many still need to be developed?
2. What is the CapEx budget for next year, and the year following?
3. Where does the rehab of the Sigma Shaft fit in time wise and what is the Capex projection for that?
Bottom line is that CMM has not done a very good job of explaining its "start-up" plan and why it will take 24+ months to achieve targeted production levels.
Chris. I'm using the first pour April 30th 2010 as the start. We are approximately 7 months from that date. One could argue the activities prior to the pour would be counted, but they do not change the math that much.
I think you may have just mis-interpreted my comment. To clarify, my comment was that we are only 7 months INTO production. Not that we need to wait 7 months for production. I'm not distinguishing between commercial and non-commerical.
Cheers,
RE
To Anonymous
"Bottom line is that CMM has not done a very good job of explaining its "start-up" plan and why it will take 24+ months to achieve targeted production levels."
Do you seriously beleive it will take 24 months or more to be on target??
Does anybody else agree with this??
real_economics,
My bad real_econ, I did misinterpret your comments.
Thanks for the clarification.
No prob Chris, I wrote it weird so I realized it could have easily been read that way.
Blevitt, it's not an "all or none" situation. At this point, the key is to show progress. If we can go from 600 TPD to 1000 TPD then 1100 TPD, it's not a big stretch to then keep growing that to the eventual 2000 TPD capacity.
Same thing with ounces produced on a monthly basis. The grade for BD and North Wall are going to be higher than the flats so Peter mentioned we might come in closer to 3.5 g/t now but that will increase as the BD and North Wall contributions increase.
Guys, the market is not efficient - and with CMM they are overly skeptical and inefficient. They are pricing us as either having an invisible mine or ZERO improvement and zero progress. We are priced as if Lamaque is equally likely to lose money as make money. To me, this is too far a stretch with almost zero probability given the data we have so far. Lamaque is going to make significant profits with these gold prices for sure.
Once we show progress officially, I expect the share price to follow.
Go pump Timmins on the Timmins board or start a Timmins board. Critiques and legit questions about CMM are welcome here but not your unrelated worthless Timmins pump.
Thx Carib for the deletion of the irrelevant post. Were one week away from some real news guys. Cheers, RE
Century Mining was in Munich at the weekend represented by Peter Ball. Therefore the link to the Montreal fair was not correct on the homepage.
The link to the fair is: http://www.edelmetallmesse.com
There's been some talk that the Russian shareholder is artificially keeping the share price down so that he could eventually buy the company out at a lower price. If it's true, this is a huge concern because CMM is worth at least 3-4 times its current stock price. This wouldn't be a problem if the shareholder rights plan applied to him. However, due to the capital raising in Sept. 2009, the plan was amended so that Finskiy could acquire up to 66% of the company without any approval. Even if he acquires more than 66%, all he needs to majority approval from the minority. I would like to ask if we could reinstate the shareholder rights plan for Finskiy too.
It doesn't make any sense for Finskiy to keep the price lower for an eventual takeover. If that was his plan, why wou;ld he allow the 2 recent private placements to occur? Those would just complicate his plans.
It just doesn't add up.
If Finisky was interested in increasing his stake in the company, he would:
1. Not exercise warrants, but offer to provide funding via additional private placements. He did not participate in the recent PP's
2. Buy shares on the open market.
How do you keep the price artifically low if you don't feed shares into the market? Finisky has sold 0 shares and he hasn't bought any either.
On another topic, I've recently deleted a couple of Anonymous posts that added no value to the discussion. One of the blog rules is that Anonymous posts are subject to deletion. I am considering restricting posting to Blog Members only.
Could i then ask for membership if you ever decide to do that Carib? I would still like to ask questions and raise issues. I like to be part of this blog.
Responding to the comment on YNG:
YNG fully diluted is closer to 1 billion market cap.
This stock did not move until "steady state" production was achieved. Once they did achieve this benchmark the stock quickly moved from 20-88 cents.
The street is in a "show me the money mood" for all but the most highly respected operators.
CMM needs to increase tonnage to the mill .. once they do that the stock will likely move up .. but not much before.
Thanks Mike.
When do you expect tonnage to the mill to increase?
Holding CMM for 18 months. I WANT TO BELIEVE this company is actually going somewhere...butttttt
Once again, gold breaking new highs, gold stocks setting new highs, CMM langusihing in the gutter and going DOWN! Go figure!
Weary Canuck
only one thing to say you make money whit money, they try to invest less money to operate the mine whitout buying gears and stuff and they thing they going to have 100% fonctionnal operation of lamaque, they slash bonus of miners
Tonnage is increasing as per my talk with Peter last week: 1000 - 1300 tonnes per day .. This increase has come about as they start to take rock out of the Bedard dyke .. the Third area is the north slope and they are just starting into this zone .. by the first month of 2011 I hope to see consistant production above 1500 tonnes/day
Rick -
I had begun to think you had been promoted, we haven't heard from you for so long. Would you tell us more about the gears and (no) bonuses at Lamaque?
Aside, a little story for the short-timers: Mt. Milligan. A massive, rich trove of copper, gold, silver and who knows what else? A mountain made of metal. People have been trying to make a mine out of it for over thirty years, and every one of them has gone bust. Thirty years, hundreds of millions of dollars. The tireless work of thousands of men. At the end of the day, it will be Thompson Creek's jump to the majors or another swansong. Yet here we are, complaining about having to wait a year or two to get the kind of return this mine could bring. Probably will bring. Keith Hulley might not excite the kind of discussion that Peggy does, but he has gotten a great deal done since June.
This mine has stumped people before as well-and I'm not unhappy that engineers, geologists and metallurgists are laying the current groundwork. They may not have PK's pizazz, but maybe soon we'll be a steady producer.
no am not promoted chillby but i was looking for other mine to go work lamaque suck cuz we got to fight all the time for our bonus , the mine hired 3 miners but 4 miners left to go in other mine who they dont have to fight for the bonus. yeah they buying jumbos scoops but they never buying part to fix it the ware house is alway empty i thing the big trouble is they have no communication whit all the departement , but we can see a small amelioration for the security more ventilation we got in underground thats good
Hi Mike
'start to take rock out of the Bedard Dyke..the third area is the north slope..'
I believe they are taking ORE out of the Bedard Dyke..the third area is the North Wall (your North Slope) I suppose? I will be startled if they are really only taking Rock out.
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