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The issue right now is cash and burn rate. We have a big pile of gravel which indiates that they've got the mining part up and running well. It also indicates that they are not processing very much of the gravel. A while back I did a calculation of the amount they could mine in an eight hour shift. It came out to about 1,200 yards per day which matches the plant's capacity of 150 yards per hour. So if they're processing at capacity there shouldn't be much of a pile at all. We had major setbacks in the third quarter. It looks like we've had a few in the fourth quarter too. Airdale's photo shoot showed that the belts weren't running in mid December. It also showed that the geotube field wasn't completed.
They'll be lucky if they produce 100 ounces in the month of December which would yield $140,000. What I want to see is the pile going down, not getting bigger. We've already seen some minor dilution at less than equitable terms; hopefully, we won't see much more. No need to shoot the messenger. Just a reality check to counter some over enthusiastic predictions. January may be the turning point for the company. I've got my fingers crossed.
Merry Christmas.\V/_ :)
Actually I don"t know. Until the conveyors are actually running this still has a lot of risk on the downside. Until they're actually processing with a good recovery rate they'll be burning their limited cash supply quickly. A lot of the posting today had the same tone of the posts previous to the Aug 15th PR. December doesn't look like it will be producing much gold.
Hate to be a grinch today, but until they are actually running the mill and recovering a significant amount of gold the share price won't be going anywhere. My fingers are crossed, but until I see the conveyors running I'm not ready to have a cow.
Were the conveyors running while you were there?
Although stockpiling gravel is a good thing, the real issue is recovery. They have a limited amount of startup capital which won't last very long if they aren't actually producing. If they produce 100 ounces they'll generate $140,000 in much needed revenue. I couldn't tell from Airdale's video if the plant was running. If we were not we're in trouble.
Good news, with the new Archmedian screws you'll have enough sand for a beach for your inner tube outings on the geotubes.
We do know, the twin screws are after the hydro cyclone and are for treating the slurry before it goes to the geo tubes.
There's always next year. We're starting to sound like Chicago Cubs fans. Until we see a recovery rate nobody knows nothing.
The issue seems to be the same as it was in 2007. There's too much sand in the output from the hydrocyclones which filled up the settling pond in 2007 and was filing up the two geotubes too quickly this year. The addition of the Archemedian screws will eliminate a good portion of the sand before they go to the new geotube field and make water recovery more efficient; plus, it will save wear and tear on the pumps.
I really don't think that the issue is with large particle recovery which can be easily handled by the shaker tables. The issue is the recovery of the microscopic gold as it has since the beginning. One of the reasons that this area was not successfully mined in the past was that these tiny particles could not be recovered using conventional placer techniques. The other mines in the area use cyanide heap leaching to produce gold.
Airdale's pictures show that they've got the mining part down pat. The question is do they have the processing part in hand. We really won't know that until the first part of next year.
Just a side note for mining buffs, the major copper mines in Arizona and New Mexico finaced their operations with the gold, silver, and mollydmium they recovered in the process; the copper they recovered was pure profit.
He has a point. The share price would be considerably higher had they met their predicted output and recovery rate.
Thanks for your efforts. The key question is were the conveyors ru;nning?
You are such a tease. ;) \V/_
In any startup situation cash is always king. If we can actually produce enough gold in the next couple of months the cash flow can become positive quickly since there is a short turn around time. Essentially we're in the same situation we were in six months ago where we had enough cash for a couple of months of production and the possibility of recovering enough gold to cover expenses. It's all contingent on throughput and recovery rate. The situation is looking better than it did a couple of weeks ago. Hopefully there won't be a shortage of air for the tires.
Excellent work as usual.
Please, leave him alone!!!
This is the start of the winter wet season in the western deserts, so it's a good thing that they started stockpiling the gravels in the fall. The rains won't stop the mining, but they will slow it down. Shows some foresight on their part.
We probably won't see a production PR until after the first of the year. December will be about the only month they will have been able to run the processing mill.
First of all I'm not a dude.
Second, your reasoning is flawed. If they were into pumping and dumping they'd be screwing themselves since they control close to a majority of shares. If they were pocketing the money from dilution, why in the world would they be be installing the 8 new geotubes and the Archmedian screws?
Third, the 13 million additional shares had little if any effect on the share price. What did effect the share price was the lack of production and failure to meet the projected production rate. Your capacity to ignore the obvious is amazing.
Fourth, you have totally ignored the fact that this is a restructuring of pre-existing debt. You make it sound like it's a totally new issuance of shares.
Unlike some I'm willing to cop to an error in calculations. I inadvertanty used the Dude's number of 50% in lieu of the actual 45% discount rate. Using Fox's .012 per share weighted average it comes out to 4,166,667 new shares. Actually they're not new shares but are a conversion of $500,000 of the existing note to Rob's company. The terms kind of suck, but what seems to be obvious has been largely ignored. They have enough money now to fund operations for a couple of months which is essentially good news. The real question is will they be able to produce gold profitably. They've bought themselves enough time to get the operation up and running. All of this evil genius hokum of 100% interest is based on a less than likely scenario. Quite frankly if they're not profitable by May or June Chapter 11 is a much more probable scenario.
If you take the $50,000 dollars which were converted and multipy it by 45% it's a $22,500 premium for badly needed cash.
The closing price on Dec 2nd was .0175, so using your math 5,714,286 shares were issued. The shares traded on that day were 888,354. In fact 11,840,764 shares have traded since Dec 2nd. Are you saying that the shares were dumped in that time frame? Or roughly 48% of the volume was shares being dumped in that time frame. The charts don't show any sudden rise in volume. Hmmmm?
So, how many shares were issued on Dec 2nd?
Big food fight today; everybody throwing apples and oranges at each other. The addition of the Archemedian screws is an attempt to solve their ongoing desanding issue that's been going on since 2007-2008. Running the plant while they were being installed would not be much of a problem because it's at the end of the process. The output from the hydrocyclones could easily be routed to the geotubes while the installation was in progress. The only limitation would be how fast the tubes filled up. I don't see any indications that the plant's capacity has been increased. What the additional tubes and the screws provide is the ability for them to meet the plants capacity. Barring any more problems, it looks like December will be an actual production month. I'd be happy with them processing 50% of the plant's capacity while they fine tune the system (approx 12,000 yards). Took a look at some of the other mines in the area and they have a recovery rate of between 60-90%, Most of them are heap leach process, but it might give us a reasonable range for a recovery rate.
Fox, feel free to correct my thinking on the financing, but I think I've got it figured out. They sold $500,000 of the existing note they owed Rob's company to another investor. That gave them cash to pay the bills and although the terms weren't that good, it was necessary to keep things running. There might be some additional dilution, but not as much as Sumdude is projecting.
Nobody, remember when you were predicting 4x-5x production numbers with the additional 8 tubes?
Let's at least try to be civil with our posts for the rest of the day.
Interesting development. It looks like they're making progress on the desanding issue. It does confirm that the bags were filling up too fast as originally configured. It's still too early to decide whether or not they will be successful. There should be some indication of the recovery rate by the end of December. Let's hope that they get the numbers out as soon as they are available.
If not "sucked in" what would you use? Misled? Manipulated? Lying by omission? My point was that because they witheld material information and allowed speculation to go on unchecked which was fed by the share buyback announcement, they lost a good deal of their hard earned credibility. As others have pointed out your statement that "the company and management owes shareholders squat," is flawed. It is after all a publicly traded company and is accountable to it's shareholders. The problem is that between Mitch and Rob they have a controlling interest in the company and they are the board of directors. They have a good deal of personal interest in seeing that the company succeeds and have worked hard at it, but because of the concentration of power in two individuals there is a tendency to ignore the small investor.
Right now they're on probation pending actual results. The 8K that came out today confirmed their finacial skills which I have never doubted. They'll be able to make payroll which should keep the operation going. The real question is do they have sufficient technical skills to run the operation successfully? The jury is still out on that pending the recovery rate and throughput.
They already have 27 million in write offs; no need for more. There have been a lot of posts excusing mangement lately. They do need to be held accountable for a couple of things. First, the original testing of the geotubes last year was inadequate to determine their water handling capacity as evidenced by the need for the additional geotubes. Second, on Sept 13 when they announced the additional geotubes they could have cautioned that the Aug 15th numbers could not be met until the new tubes were installed. Instead they chose to be silent about their problems and let the projected numbers stand. A lot of us feel that we were suckered by them. Even Robo got sucked in (There's always a bright side).
Anyway, that's water under the bridge at this point. Any announcements after the last one will be subject to a good deal of doubt. The question everyone will be asking is, "Where's the gold?" I seriously doubt that the $180,000 they had at the end of the quarter will be enough to see them through actual production. They need to meet payroll and lease costs and it's going to be a very tight situation. I strongly suspect they'll have to have some dilution. We're going to be stuck @ the .02 per share range until there's some real news.
This might put an end to it:
They processed the stockpiled gravel because they didn't have the equipment to haul the gravel from the mine site until at least mid September. The stockpile was used because all that was required was a skip loader. This horse has been beat to death; let it rest in peace. The real issue is the current recovery rate which won't be known until the end of the year.
Fox this is more of a question than anything else. I'm not a geologist by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks like the Coral Gold claims are different than ours they are South of our area and are mostly about a different geological structure. Our claims are primarily alluvial deposits coming from the Bald Mountain Area. I've been doing a little research on the area myself and I'll get back with you when I get the data I've gathered into a readable form. Take a look at the topographic map I think you'll see what I mean.
Fox found this on page 14 in the 93 report: http://www.nbmg.unr.edu/dox/mi/93.pdf
I knew about the lawsuit. It's the difference between the Canadian and American justice system. Their supreme court equates to our superior court. By the way that's a great website for dd.
Where did you come up with the Supreme Court case?
The original number they used was 200 yards per hour which was down graded to 150. The geotubes were not a perceived factor when they calculated these numbers. The 150 yards is what the plant can physically process. There isn't enough information to calculate the effect of the geotubes on the plant's process capacity. They got $1,422.18 per ounce in the last quarter.
There just isn't enough information to make a prediction with any confidence. These are guesses, but you can use them if you want to. The predicted production cost based on the Aug 15th PR came out to $525.00 per ounce. That's about it as far as available numbers go. So your guess is as good as mine on this. My suspicion is that they need 8 total tubes for full production with 2 for backup. The beak even point based on the Aug 15th PR is about .13 ounces per yard
Actually, they're permitted to mine 810,000 tons or 540,000 yards per year. In their previous guidance 400,000 yards was projected as an annual rate. The plant capacity is 150 yards per hour or 1,200 yards per day. They plan on running the mill at 95% capacity which would be 1,140 per 8 hour shift. They've pretty well blown the first six months of the permitted time. If they run at full capacity for the last six months on a 5 day 40 hour week they'd process 148,709 yards or 55% of their projected output. Remember that these are ideal numbers which don't take into account equipment failure, accidents and a host of other unforseen circumstances. Realistically 100,000 yards is what I'd expect. The other factor in the equation is the recovery rate. The company hasn't given an indication of what that is and that's not a good sign.
Without any 43-101 report or company guidance or support from an outsied source, the possibility of the ecomomic recovery of additional metals is a pretty far reach.
Foxwood, from the March 8, 2004 10 Q Exhibit 10-2 Mining Lease Agreement:
They originally had 2; then they got permitted to install 8 more; they just added 4 more of the 8. There are 6 functioning tubes onsite and the are installing an additional 4 for a total of 10.
I spent some time over the weekend thinking about what it would be like if I were a new investor considering buying PCFG. I would have spent some time reading the board and figuring out who were the bashers, the cheerleaders and who knew what they were talking about. I also would have been impressed by the dd and particularly the Ibox. Because of the company's checkered history and the recent lack of information, I'd put it in the fifty/fifty category. Whether or not I invested would depend on how much risk I'd be willing to take. I sure wouldn't bet the ranch on it. The company is sitting on the cusp of production, but since there isn't a reliable recovery rate available, available cash is limited and mangement has not addressed viable sharholder concerns, I, personally would take a wait and see attitude until better data was available. Given the recent relative low volume and the ho-hum reaction to today's announcement I'd be willing to sit it out and take a wait and see attitude pending real news, i.e., full production news with recovery rates. What I'd want to see would be a montly recovery rate of 200 ounces or above before I'd really commit any serious cash into this company.
For what it's worth, after following this board for over a year I don't think that I've ever heard anyone mention the possibility of cyanide heap leaching as an alternative to/or supplement of the placer operation. Some of the other miners in the area use it.
Good news and bad news. They've got NDEP approval. They didn't give any reovery rates.
On your historical thread, some names keep poppong up Mineras Barevor, AT&E Engineerring, Maymac Petoleum, John H. Uhalde.
From the 2010 10K:
There's enough bad information floating around on this board. If they work one eight hour shift five days a week they're capable of processing 23,940 cubic yards in December @ 95% stated production capacity. That's the upper limit which we are painfully aware that they won't be able to meet. The additional tubes allow them to approach that. Using 23,940 as a bench mark, it would allow them to process 55% of their stated goal of 120,000 per quarter.
The fact that they need additional geotubes to process gravel with their existing plant tells me that the original testing they did last year was inadequate. They received $5,836 in revenue for the gravel processed during the test or roughly 5 ounces of gold. In July of this year they produced 30 ounces of gold From 6,500 yards of stockpiled gravel. So they processed 1/6th of that back in November of last year or about 1,083 yards during the test. Their mill capacity is 1,140 yards per day at 95%. So in other words they processed one day's worth of gravel during the tests. Obviously they didn't run the plant long enough to find out how quickly the bags filled up. My thinking is that when they started up in July they found out that the existing two geotubes weren't sufficent to sustain expected processing capacity and ordered the additional eight bags. The bags were filling up to too quickly. It would be useful to know what the gold content in the collected slurry is so we could determine how efficient the plant is in recovering gold from the gravel.
I hope you don't think I'm nit picking, but there's been way too many rose colored predictions flying around. Let's keep our expectations in the realm of reality. My personal thinking is that they'll hit around 10,000 to 12,000 yards for December and recover around 75 to 150 ounces of gold.