Hi yielddude,

We met in Vegas in 2006? But we haven't met again.

Bobwins

Big Platinum News +$38.40 to $904.10

Platinum has been the laggard in precious metals for several years. The VW Diesel debacle has slowed diesel sales worldwide and that has lessened demand for platinum in catalytic converters. Conversely Palladium and Rhodium are used in gasoline catalytic converters and are in actual deficit supply situations, leading to tremendous increases in prices.

Last week Anglo American Platinum announced a temporary shutdown of their Anglo Converter Plant. They had an explosion that shutdown their primary converter A 2/10/20. They had a backup unit and were in the process of ramping it up when they found water in the furnace unit, which could cause explosions. So they had to shut down the B unit. They expect Unit A to be repaired by second qtr 2021 and Unit B to be back in operation in 80 days.

As a result of the total closure of this part of the process, they expect total platinum production to drop by ~900K ounces in 2020.

THIS IS HUGE! Total world platinum production in 2018 was ~8 million ounces. Over 10% of supply has just vanished until 2021. I expect platinum prices to finally participate in the PGM rally. In addition, this will also give manufacturers more time to transition from palladium to platinum in designing catalytic converters. Palladium is still more than 2 times more expensive than platinum at $2400 vs 904 per ounce.

The shortage in platinum will not be huge, a few hundred thousand ounces for 2020 but the example of a major producer going offline may cause users to try to stockpile platinum, which could lead to a bigger short term price jump than fundamentals would justify.

Who's going to benefit? Sibanye Stillwater, SBSW, is a good candidate. #1 platinum producer in the world. #2 palladium producer #1 rhodium producer. They win any which way it goes in the PGM world.

Here are the links:

https://www.angloamericanplatinum.com/media/press-releases/2020/06-03-2020

https://www.statista.com/statistics/418212/global-platinum-supply/

https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/wpic-platinum-quarterly-2019-global-platinum-market-balanced-with-surplus-forecast-in-2020-300961909.html

Keep an eye out for the report from China on the results of the Remdesivir trials. First reports due out in April. Remdesivir appears to have a decent chance of helping. Gilead has developed remdesivir, although it's not approved for anything yet. GILD has done well in the recent markets, with shares moving up 5% today.

TLT has also done well due to the rush to the bond markets.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/these-nine-companies-are-working-on-coronavirus-treatments-or-vaccines-heres-where-things-stand-2020-03-06?siteid=yhoof2&yptr=yahoo

This is a bit late but one hedge against the volatility is TLT. What is the one thing we can almost guarantee, FED will lower rates if things look bad. They are the one central bank that has room to do it.

Actually TLT has been a slightly better hedge than gold. I'm sticking with gold but TLT has done a nice job and market is expecting another .25 in March.

On a CV-19 note, the deaths in Seattle are almost all from the nursing home. 9 deaths so far and about a 30% death rate vs verified cases because most of the cases are from the one nursing home. They have had to quarantine dozens of the local city ambulance crews because they have been taking the nursing home folks by ambulance to the hospital without hazmat suits before the confirmed CV 19 diagnosis. I expect there will be dozens of deaths from this one facility with 180 residents and 80 employees. One news story said 50 of the staff have some symptoms.

https://komonews.com/news/coronavirus/feds-to-investigate-kirklands-life-care-center-as-death-toll-rises

On another side note, I expect a big market pop if the current tests that started in mid February come out positive for the anti virals that were intended for other diseases but might help with CV-19. The first victim in Washington recovered and he was given remdesivir early in the process. This is a failed ebola treatment. The victim was young so he probably would have recovered anyway but even if it helped avoid some fatalities in the older, weakened victims, it might reduce death toll significantly. They are also testing an AIDS combo drug.

I live in Seattle and was out yesterday to a doctor's appt. As I was sitting in the waiting room, I noticed how many elderly(like me!) were in the room. Then I thought about the medical assistants and nurses in the office. If/When the panic hits, Can you imagine the danger of getting the virus for the medical staff? They didn't have face masks on, which I've read are not that effective but soon we may see routine working folks wearing hazmat suits.

Then I went to Target to pick up something. It wasn't that busy but I did notice two young Asian guys with face masks on. They were loading up on water and probably getting prepared for the worst. Then I thought about the retail clerks. They are sitting ducks for the virus.

I have plenty of canned goods and I don't venture out of my house that much anyway, except to babysit my grandkids. They are always catching colds from their little playmates. Are they going to shut down all the schools? How can they stop runny nose kids from spreading the virus like wildfire? AND giving it to their elderly grandpa@!

I was planning on going to Las Vegas next week for the PAC 12 basketball tournament. We'll see how the situation changes by then.

This may blow over and be no worse than the flu but it does seem a little more dangerous. Keep your families safe!

OT

Today's interest rate cuts symbolize our situation. Having created giant asset bubbles all thru the economy, the FED is desperate to reinflate the bubbles, regardless of the consequences.

Cutting interest rates is NOT going to solve a damn thing against the coronavirus outbreak. Will it make more test kits available? Will it cause people to venture out of their houses more? Will it make them eager to buy cars? NOT! The coronavirus is creating a demand slump of HUGE porportions that hasn't hit the US in full force yet.

Remember those pictures of Wuhan streets EMPTY! This is a city of 11 million people! Do you think they care if interest rates are 1/2 % lower???

The FED is catering to Wall Street again. When the bubble pops, the damage to the economy AND individuals will be bad. Much worse than if they had just let 2008 reset the economy. Delaying the inevitable is just going to make it worse and allow bad players to survive when they should go out of business.

We are here to make money in stocks so interest rate cuts are good but this move and all the previous moves to create asset bubbles will hurt the US economy in the long run. No guts, no glory!

The FED and politicians have NO GUTS! We are printing money till it don't work no more. Move over Venezuela!

no gave up on SGI.v. It's still cheap but will need to prove they can reliably produce 80K + smoothly introduce the open pits to get to around 100K. Could get lumpy and market won't reward them for that until there's a reliable pattern of achievement. Always liked the big resource and the availability of second mill to expand operations but will pass for now.

Had CDE last year. Market was banking on Silvertip to provide some uplift to production, especially since the company was guiding for HUGE production of lead and zinc from Silvertip into Q4, even though they hadn't come close all year. I think the market will keep penalizing CDE. Terrible mgmt effort should not be rewarded.

Now they have to admit their error by closing down the mine due to low prices but also because they couldn't even produce 1/2 their guidance at Silvertip.

Gold and finally silver appear to be headed up some more. Money printing by all the world's central banks is not going to stop until we have a full fledged financial disaster. They know the consequences but are not willing to let their economies go thru the normal ups and downs of the economic cycle. In the end, they will try to blame something else but they have only themselves to blame.

So, based on that rant, you know I'm very bullish on gold and silver, which bodes well for miners. The mining stocks have not runup this time with gold and silver. Market is still in love with general equities because the FED will intervene anytime there's any problems......until liquidity doesn't solve the problem. So there's plenty of room on the upside. I'm sticking with bigger miners because that's what will move first after gold and silver prices surge and most are already profitable from the previous moves in metals prices. Some appear stretched on valuation BUT the leverage should begin to show up in the P&L's soon. If they're producing a million oz of gold and gold goes up $100/oz, that's $100 million bucks that going to show up as increased revs AND net profit minus taxes. Costs shouldn't change much as prices rise so the producing miners should get full benefit from rising prices.

Naturally the longer this goes on, the more mgmt can grant themselves pay raises and bonuses to erode profits but mining has gone thru an ugly bear market for years so I think mgmts will be a little slower this time around in granting themselves too many gifts.

The other bugaboo is greedy miners that think they have to buy smaller miners to bulk themselves up and overpay. Again, because they have been punished by the market for so long, I don't think M&A will heat up as fast this time. Of course CDE bought Silvertip fairly recently so just try to see if mgmt has done a good job of managing thru the lean times and hope they don't get cocky or stupid.

I think the chances of making money in the miners is very good. The FED is going to keep lowering rates and that should be good for the metals.

Good luck, I was out trout fishing Wednesday. The weather was glorious!
Fishing was ok but hoping for more good weather so I can go again.

GOLD hitting 7 year highs at $1623. Looks like gold rally from 5/19 is resuming uptrend. Very positive for any miners producing gold.

to be fair, the economic background for energy stocks has been bleak. GSPE is speculative and has certainly fallen from more optimistic days but even solid producers are getting whacked hard by the forecasts of surplus supply and slack demand worldwide.

IF GSPE drills and IF they hit the big one, it's an undervalued sleeper that could make us a lot of money but there are a lot of IFS and I'm sure many are tired of waiting with no news from the company for months.

SBGL +.77 to 12.77 SBGL riding another big day in PGM and precious metals pricing. Palladium is the rocket booster, soaring as much as $250/oz in early trading overseas but now a +$114/oz increase to $2612/oz. Platinum also up $11 to 1005. Gold slightly positive at +5.50 to 1609.

I would prefer slow and steady but palladium must be a case of an actual shortage AND a test of the fractional trading system used in metals futures trading. Gold and silver trade many times actual physical availability of the metals because most traders never expect to deliver the metal. Tin hatters always talk about the squeeze if the sellers ever had to deliver physical bullion.

In the case of palladium, we are seeing what happens when there is an actual shortage and sellers are having to pay up to deliver the metal they promised when they sold contracts. The sellers are having to pay more and more to deliver the actual metal.

The scary part is that eventually this merry go round is going to stop. Eventually the contract sellers will either close out all their contracts and swear off short selling OR the exchange may be forced to declare some kind of rule change or suspension of palladium trading. The China coronavirus situation plays into this because China has become the largest car market in the world. The main use for both palladium and platinum is in auto catalystic converters for emission reductions. If China's virus problems turns into an economic disaster, the demand for car exhaust catalysts is going to take a big hit and palladium demand will diminish. How far it falls depends on the severity of the economic contraction and the length of said contraction.

SBGL has reasonable costs on their pgm operations so could easily afford to have prices fall from current levels and stay in business but they just reached profitability in Q4 so you can't say they are flush and could handle any situation. But they were producing when platinum was $800 and palladium was $500 or less.

IF gold continues it's bullish run, that might provide a nice cushion for SBGL and their PGM operations. The gold operations is recovering from the multiyear strike and will reach full production by year end 2020. Full production is slighty above 1million oz/year.

SBGL +.68 to $11.99 new 52wkhi intraday of $12.12

metals prices were up across the board today. As usual Palladium was up the most at +$181 to $2498/oz. Platinum was also up $25.70 to 994 and gold was hovering just above $1603 or +16.80. These huge increases should make Q1 very profitable.

SBGL +.68 to $12, new 52wkhi

Big pop in metals prices today! Gold +17, Platinum +25, rhodium +30, Palladium +180.

Given that SBGL is #1 worldwide in production of platinum and rhodium and #2 in palladium and #10 in gold, just today's price increases held for one qtr would add $100 million to topline revs and profits for SBGL.

It's only one day but today could mark new breakouts for gold and platinum.

SBGL is a unicorn metals producer. I am worried about the impact of the Coronavirus on China's auto sector(biggest in the world) but 2020 could be a very special year for Sibanye.

yielddude,,, OGC.to another old favorite. I remember when they put Didipio into production. Looks like their 2020 guidance doesn't include anything from Didipio.. Production will be down about 100K oz but still a substantial mid tier producer with good cash costs.

With Didipio on hold, I don't see a dramatic upside to the stock. Of course, if the Philippine government were to allow Didipio to resume operations, this is headed back towards C$5.

If gold rallies, Oceana will probably still be a market performer at best. Sad but this good company is a victim of country politics that aren't likely to change overnight. Safe jurisdictions are the best way to play miners. Don't take a chance on politicians taking your investment away.

mbx.to looks like a slow and steady play. Not familiar with the company but looked at annual sales for the past few years and saw 9, 10, 12, 13 million sales. Just getting to profitability. Should be a steady way to play biotech. Not sure it's going to create much excitement unless they can market new products and get the revs growing faster.

Goro is an old favorite of mine. Looks like new gold mine is kicking in with Q3 revs and eps rising. Expect market will appreciate steady approach to gold mining as well as steady dividend. Based on Q3, 2020 eps should be the low to mid .20's.

I have been playing bigger miners for the past few months. The gold rally has stalled a bit and after the train wreck of the past decade, investors aren't fully onboard yet. The trend towards etf's will retard the junior sector until gold prices attract more individual investors. The existing gold funds are definitely comprised of medium to large producers rather than junior explorers.

As you can tell from my posts, I like Sibanye Stillwater, SBGL. With the tremendous rally in palladium and rhodium over 2019, SBGL has been on fire. I expect the stock to continue to appreciate as financial results continue to improve. While both palladium and rhodium could easily reverse direction, I expect gold and platinum to take up the slack. SBGL is uniquely balanced in their production, with the four metals contributing around 1/4 each. I expect SBGL to reinstate dividends in mid 2020, which should bring another group of new investors to SBGL, including more dividend focused etf's and mutual funds.

This isn't a small junior, with a 7 billion market cap but with current metals prices, SBGL is still due for a rerating and a 10+billion market cap. If gold takes off in 2020, the stock chart should continue looking like the left side of a steep mountain.

Another biggish miner that I think will benefit from a new mine is Mag Silver. They are 44% partners with Fresnillo, the big Mexican miner in a district scale deposit near Fresnillo's big mine. The mine should come online in late 2020 and should be huge. The mine is expected to produce over 20 million silver oz a year and significant gold. Mag has over 100 million in cash on their balance sheet and no debt! The new mine will not only turn Mag into a cash cow but they have only explored 5% of the deposit so new discoveries could keep adding to Mag Silvers value over time.

My last pick would be Liberty Gold. This is an explorer of a big gold deposit. 6 million oz so far and more drilling to come. This is likely a buyout candidate fairly soon. There are so few multi million oz gold deposits in the world, much less in a safe US location.

Good luck. Bobwins

SBGL +.55 to $11.39 Big 5% pop in Sibanye Stillwater. Company gave Q4 and 2019 operating results today.

https://thevault.exchange/?get_group_doc=245/1581675808-sibanye-stillwater-trading-statement-year-ended-31-december2019-14feb2020.pdf

Improved PGM and gold prices made top line revs grow 44% for 2019 to US$5.043billion. Adjusted EBITDA increased 79% to US$1.034 billion.

2nd half performance was a huge improvement over 1st half 2019. Revs up 110% and EBITDA up 541% over 1st half. EBIDTA up 189% over comparable period in 2018. EBIDTA in Q3 was a greatly improved $377million but Q4 was an even better $504million.

Improved performance was used to pay down debt. Net Debt to Adjusted EBITDA ratio dropped in HALF! to 1.25 from previous year. This is significant because company said that when they reach a ratio of 1, they would consider reinstating a dividend. They had earlier said that might happen by mid year 2020 but 1 could happen soon at this rate.

I was a little disappointed that profits were a tiny $30million but this is much better than the loss of $191million for 2018.

Overall a very good report and I think the market is rewarding the company for continued good production results, gold division coming back online and dividends in the near future.

I was a little disappointed in the new rate. Hecla is going to pay 7.25 vs 6.75 on the old ones. Who is paying more interest nowadays, especially after the repair work they've done on their balance sheet?

Market seems disappointed in the refinance announcement, maybe the rate increase was leaked. Refinance is a good thing because there will be no debt deadline coming up in 2021 and postponing maturies until 2028 is also good. Guess market wants to see profits.

Shutting down Nevada operations is definitely a negative. Company says they are going to study how to improve operations and turn it into a profitable mining operation but market was obviously hoping it would be a quicker turnaround. In hindsight, acquisition of Nevada was a big recent mistake. At least mgmt has stopped the bleeding but Nevada will be an anchor until they get it fixed or give up.

They need Lucky Friday to come back online quickly and profitably. Fancy mining machine keeps getting delayed so there must be design or operational problems with it. Even after it arrives late this year, it's probably going to take some time to get it running correctly.

Earlier in the year, Siyata's UV350 was used by Motorola to demonstrate their software. Imagine how easy it would be for Motorola to "sell" existing LMR customers on new technologies, including new software solutions that improve on the customer's old LMR situation AND allow the customer to move up to the new First Responder network.

Longer term, I believe that Motorola will end up buying out Siyata so that Motorola can retain their stranglehold on the First Responder clients.

Certainly the First Responder clients would be MUCH more likely to buy this new technology from a trusted supplier like Motorola than an upstart like Siyata.

I posted last year that First Responders and the municipal governments that fund them are NOT going to be early adopters. They are NOT going to replace old LMR equipment unless they are POSITIVE that it works every time, all the time. Replacing the communications equipment in EVERY police car, every fire engine, every Chief's car, every ambulance, every school bus is a massive expense decision that won't be made easily or quickly. Several posters disagreed with me but I think that's what's happening and why it taking awhile to get traction in the market. It will happen but it will take time and some key customers to agree to be used as examples to the national community of First Responders.

no, holding 6/20 $3 calls.

HL +.21 to 3.29 Hecla posted a good Q4. They lost 8 million but had positive cashflow of $57million. For 2019 they lost 100 million with 120.9 cashflow.

Hecla had record gold production of 272K oz, 12.6 million oz of silver and record revs of 673million. They used the cashflow to pay down debt by 136million or 23% of peak net debt.

Hecla, like most miners is enjoying rising metal prices while controlling costs. Debt is an issue with the stock and that is why Hecla has been trying to paydown debt. They paid off their revolver in full and are trying to refinance term debt in the first half of 2020. They were at high junk bond rates of over 12% but now expect to refinance in the 8% range, lowering interest costs substantially and removing the refinance deadline.

I like Hecla because they have substantial silver production so could benefit from a big run in silver but also have hefty gold production that is currently the most profitable. Besides the refinancing catalyst coming up, they are restarting the Lucky Friday mine after the strike was recently settled. They should be back to a 3 million oz/yr run rate by late 2020 vs the 650K production of 2019 when they were running the mine with a skeleton crew of salaried workers and hourly staff.

Also coming in late 2020 is a specialized machine that has been in the works for a couple of years. This is a specialized mining machine that will hopefully eliminate blasting. Should be safer and more efficient. This is important because the Lucky Friday is entering the prime high grade zone of the mining material for the next 20 years of mine life. This was part of the reason for the strike. The company didn't want to go into this profitable ore with restrictive work rules. The old union rules allowed senior miners to pick where they wanted to work in the mine and who they wanted to work with. The company fought for control of their workers and finally won after a 2+ year strike. They expect about 2/3 of the initial striking miners to come back and will hire additional workers to get staffed up by year end.

By year end, Lucky Friday should become a profit center again after negative financial results for the last 2 yrs.

I have some call options on Hecla. I expect the operational and financial performance to improve in 2020 and beyond.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/heclas-fourth-quarter-continues-strong-083000847.html

SBGL +.52 to $10.63

WHO said today that Corona Virus is an epidemic but not a pandemic. That lit a fire under a lot of miners. Sibanye bounced back from a bad day yesterday because palladium really responded by climbing over $100 today. Today's rise is in spite of gold selling off presumably because Corona isn't expected to spread worldwide. We'll see. It could still be a problem for China to get under control. I watched a youtube video last night of the 1,000 bed hospital that China built in 10 days!!!!!!!!!

It was prefab but still amazing. They are building a second one that will house 1500 patients that are diagnosed with Corona. Amazing that they had the prefab materials and could get it going so fast. I still think hospitals in Wuhan will be overwhelmed because # of verified cases is in the tens of thousands. 2500 new beds will not totally address their problems but at least 2500 patients will be quarantined and not be forced to go home and spread the disease to their families. That's what's happening now.

They filed 10k for 2018. Lost $671K on total revs of $704K. That's actually not bad, considering the litigation settlement was $894K. MGMT lowered admin expenses pretty drastically. For instance, Mr. Gans didn't take a salary in 2018. So hard to predict how 2019 will look. But at least they are gradually catching up with the filing.

naturally SBGL is strong today! Goldman put out a buy and $14 price target.

Even though I am cautious on SBGL, I haven't given up on the stock. Still holding my positions, just not sure how Corona Virus will impact perceptions. With current metals prices, Sibanye is going to do well. It just depends on the perceptions in the market about their future.

I think Sibanye is a great way to play the PGM and gold markets. I expect Q4 numbers to be slightly better than Q3. They should pay down more debt and hit their guidance of reducing ebitda/debt to 1.5. When they hit 1.0, they have said they will re institute dividends, which I think will happen around mid year. So lots of good news coming.

BUT

China is a big part of the new car markets. Less new cars sold, less PGM demand. Palladium is in a bubble because paper sellers of palladium are scrambling to find physical palladium to fulfill their contractual obligations so the price has doubled. Rhodium is lightly traded and is past bubble territory. Both of these metals have probably peaked. Gold and platinum could still have their own bubbles but platinum needs automakers to switch their auto catalysts over to platinum to increase demand. That takes time and probably won't happen in 2020.

So while I expect financial results to be good in 2020 for SBGL, I am worried about the corona virus impact on China's economy and specially auto sales. Even if this peters out like SARS and doesn't turn into a pandemic, it's going to hurt China short term.

So if I were to pick a metals producer now, I'd probably lean more towards a gold heavy producer rather than SBGL. Gold is only about 1/4 the revs for SBGL so even if gold goes up strong, it may not offset the weakness in pgm's.

Siyata can't seem to get any momentum even though all the news has been good. It's probably going to take real profits to get the markets attention. Eventually Siyata may have to list on Amex to attract US$.

I thought AT&T might have more clout to send sales soaring right away but the end customer is local government agencies so they can't move that fast, especially when changing out a vital part of their operations.

huesos, this article was on the kitco site. Lobo is not my favorite newsletter writer but this article does speak to your question with some actual facts and charts.

https://www.kitco.com/commentaries/2020-01-15/Red-metal-rising.html

It's supposed to be a public company. That means public financial statements so we can tell how they are doing. No meaningful comeback until company catches up and produces timely financials. AND the financials have to be showing a positive trends and hopefully some profits.

certainly commodities have been in a long term bear market and there are definite signs that commodities are breaking out to the upside.

However, copper is a special case tied closely to economic activity. And the center of that activity is China. If there is a global slowdown/recession, China's appetite for copper is not going up and so the likelihood of a price surge are not great. The recent outbreak of this new virus is going to smack the Chinese economy hard in the short term. If they can get control of it quickly, the harm may be modest but I think it will still slow parts of their economy noticeably.

Psychologically, it will cause caution and hesitation by decision makers.

I think the copper bull call is highly dependent on a healthy Chinese economy and I think that it's premature to make that call.

SBGL +.36 to $11.14

I decided to research how much Sibanye produces in the various metals. I found a 9/19 presentation with approximate numbers from 2018. They include projected totals from the Lonmin acquisition that closed in 2019.

Platinum #1 in the world 1.48 million oz

Palladium #2 in the world 1.13 million oz (doesn’t include recycling # from US)

Rhodium #1 in the world 196K oz

Gold 10th? In the world ~1 million oz



To get an idea of the impact of rising metals prices, I looked up prices on 1/19 versus today.

Platinum $800 to 1018 today or +$218/oz

Palladium $1200 to 2354 today or +$1354/oz

Rhodium $2500 to 9,985 today or +$7485

Gold $1290 to 1557 today or +$267/oz



Using the annual production #, let’s look at the impact of the price increases on 2018 production.

Platinum 1.48X 218 = $322.6 million

Palladium 1.13 X 1354= $1.53 billion

Rhodium 196K X 7485 = 1.46 billion

Gold 1 X 267 = 267 million

Total projected annual revenue increases due to increasing metal prices $3.579.6 billion

Total annual revenue for 2018 was about 3 billion dollars. So IF prices stay elevated, total revenues will more than double from 2018 levels. Assuming costs stay about the same, the bottom line should improve by the 3.5 billion dollars.

SBGL +.95 to $11.15

I've been reviewing all the Sibanye Stillwater recent video interviews. CEO Froneman was interviewed about 4 months ago and said they were very focused on debt reduction to about 1.5 times ebidta by 12/31/19. He also mentioned dividends. He said they feel it is feasible in the near future when ebidta to debt levels reach 1 to 1.

Based on the runaway price appreciation of palladium and rhodium plus the recent awakening of platinum prices, I have to believe that Sibanye is going to announce a dividend in the first half of 2020. That should give the stock another boost upwards. Very few miners pay dividend and in this interest rate starved world, it would give investors another reason to buy SBGL.

During one of the interviews Froneman said that when they bought Stillwater for about 2 billion dollars, palladium was at $700/oz. In the video, it was last fall and palladium was at $1400/oz and he said NPV of Stillwater had gone from 2+ billion to 6 billion. Since palladium is now at $2100+, it's likely that NPV is now closer to $10 billion for Stillwater and the South African PGM and gold operations would be in addition to that.

Sibanye produces over 1 million oz of gold annually so the recent rise in gold of about $200 has added $200 million in topline revs to the company.

Sibanye is very unique in their world leading PGM production as well as their substantial gold production. I am looking forward to a breakout year in 2020 for SBGL.

CDE 5.98 -1.05 Coeur peaked a few weeks ago at 8.29. price dropped hard when two brokers issued sell and hold ratings. Obviously they knew what was coming and for once were right.

Coeur bought the Silvertip project and was projecting a huge turnaround for this base metal/silver mine. Even though results had been disappointing in 2019, Coeur reiterated their annual production guidance in mid November 2019!!!

Here are their midpoint guidance numbers versus what they actually produced:

Gold 353K oz vs 359.4K produced
Silver 13.5MM oz vs 11.7MM oz produced
Zinc 32.5MM lbs vs 17.1MM lbs produced
Lead 27.5MM lbs vs 16.6MM lbs produced

After Q3, they needed about 10MM lbs each of zinc and lead from Silvertip to reach annual guidance. When they reiterated annual guidance in November, I figured they must have solved the issues at Silvertip. Obviously they didn't. I had options and was up 4X at the peak. The broker downgrades scared me out at not even a double. Glad I got out. They will likely take a writedown of Silvertip at year end that will make the financials look even worse than these production numbers forecast.

Management credibility is going to be zero after this miss/mess. Stock starting to recover today but will drop again when 2019 financials are released in a few weeks.

SBGL +.77 to 10.97

Huge pop in platinum AND palladium. Sibanye is #1 in platinum and #2 in palladium. Also #1 in rhodium. Add in a few hundred thousand ounces of gold and you've got a winner!

sbgl 9.85 Looks like Sibanye is getting a pop at the open. For some reason, platinum is up 3% in the early trading. Sibanye is #1 platinum producer in the world. Gold, palladium also up and Sibanye is a big producer of those metals also. I looked at Q3 2019 financials. EBITDA tripled from Q2 to Q3. Expect another good report for Q4 as gold production ramps up and costs are stabilized.

SBGL closed at 9.85 yesterday but up in premarket. Platinum is up big today. +$30/oz. don't know why but Sibanye is the #1 producer of platinum in the world so should get a big pop.

SBGL +.03 to $9.89 Sibanye Gold has had a bit of a selloff after a stellar run this year. SBGL has doubled since early September with barely a blip. But after reaching a 52week high of 10.49 on 1/8/20, it sold off around .65. Still a great looking chart for 2019 and I think Sibanye has a big run coming. Gold operations in South Africa should ramp up in 2020 as the big strike has been settled for several months. In addition, Sibanye is the premier way to play the PGM market. Palladium is at record highs over $2000 and Platinum is looking for a big rebound. Platinum typically sells at a significant premium to gold due to it's relative scarcity. Eventually automakers should switch to platinum from the now twice as expensive palladium. It may take a couple of years for the reformulation of the catalytic converters and testing but it's inevitable that there will be a switch as long as the price difference is this great.

On another note, I found that as of the latest listing, SBGL is the largest single holding of GDXJ, the gold juniors etf.

miners are a leveraged way to play precious metals prices. But this could be a short term pop in prices so the actual producers don't always participate until the public believes that the prices are here to stay.

Gold and precious metals markets are still recovering from a vicious bear market. That drove away most investors. And the FED probably doesn't support gold prices whenever they fall.

Happy New Year to all the old timers! Bobwins

gold moving towards 7 yr high, currently around $1576. Global tensions, obvious and unprecedented money printing all over the world, government intervention in stock, bond, currency markets, what me worry?

My favorite pick is SBGL. ~$10 This is a big South African miner with platinum, palladium, rhodium, gold production. Most profits are being driven by their Montana operations producing palladium and platinum. If the world economy does well and autos follow, SBGL is the obvious choice. They are the world's largest platinum producer. They are the third largest palladium producer, key to automotive catalytic converters. Rhodium is a significant contributor and has soared above $5,000/oz. But if SHTF, SBGL is a big gold producer.

Gold has been the problem child for SBGL. Miner strikes in South Africa hampered production and resulted in losses in 2019. Those strikes were settled in mid 2019. Company is ramping up operations and should return to big profits in 2020. How big? Several dollars a share. The company has been digesting two major acquisitions over the past three years. 2020 should be the year when everything comes together.

https://thevault.exchange/?get_group_doc=245/1574838315-IRmeetingpresentationendNov2019Londonshorttoprint.pdf

gold ended the day at 1551.40, a very positive day. Getting close to breakout levels as this was the area that gold peaked at in September before fading. IF we can push thru 1550 decisively, we should make a near term run at $1600 and more. Geopolitical tensions are good for gold as well as the recent weakness in the US$.

Conversely gold miners sold off after the morning pop and ended negative.

Guess we'll find out next week whether gold continues towards a breakout or the miners fade more.

SBGL Sibanye is a big cap miner. Split between the old Stillwater PGM in Montana and traditional South African deep underground mining, Sibanye has recently settled with unions that hindered their gold mining operations in S Africa. Sibanye is big. They are #1 platinum producer in the world. Platinum has been pounded down to historically low levels by the diesel crisis. Recently the price has bottomed and begun to rise.

They are #3 in palladium production worldwide. Palladium has been the star of metals prices, hitting 1800/oz as gas car catalytic converters have been in high demand and production of palladium is pretty level. the deficit has caused rapidly rising prices, while most other metals have suffered.

Sibanye is a big gold producer and should get a big boost now that the union workers are back. 2nd half 2019 should show improvement and 2020 should show the full production capacity of the S African gold mines. With the improvement in gold prices, Sibanye should show significant improvements in cashflow.

Rhodium price increases have been spectacular to the $5,000/oz level. Also used in catalytic converters, Rhodium is a minor metal but Sibanye is a major producer and has benefitted from the price rise and will continue to do so.

Sibanye is a unique producer of gold and PGM's. Much of the world's palladium comes from Russia. The price increases won't impact world production because PGM's are rarely the primary metal in deposits and there are very few potential pgm deposits with high enough grade to make money, even at current prices.

Sibanye has tripled from the lowest levels of 2019 but still has big upside due to the negative effects of the S African strike on production and costs. I have seen estimates that Sibanye could earn as much as $6/share in cashflow in 2020. Given it's unique position, Sibanye will benefit from gold, palladium, platinum and rhodium like no other listed stock. Currently priced at $8.82, SBGL could easily triple again in 2020. There are downsides. Many investors hate the South African exposure, the high cost deep deep mining and the potential for power disruptions, strikes and losses if metal prices don't continue climbing.
The Stillwater operations represent about 50% of operations and have been the reason for recent balance sheet improvements. This is a rare high grade PGM deposit that is producing exactly what the world craves.


https://thevault.exchange/?get_group_doc=245/1567082412-sibanye-H12019-results-booklet-29aug2019.pdf

https://thevault.exchange/?get_group_doc=245/1574838315-IRmeetingpresentationendNov2019Londonshorttoprint.pdf

I bought a small position in SBGL options out to 7/20 at $7.50 strike. I hope to liberate some additional cash in the next few weeks and buy more.

this looks big

Siyata Mobile To Be Major Supplier in Large Government Tender for Push-to-Talk Over Cellular (“PoC”) Devices
Tender for Various Government Agencies Valued Between $3M to $5M

Montréal, QC – Siyata Mobile Inc. (TSX-V:SIM | OTCQX: SYATF) (the "Company" or "Siyata") is pleased to announce the Company will be the main supplier of a closed government tender to deliver up to 15,000 Push-to-Talk Over Cellular (“PoC”) devices for various government agencies. Dependent on the total units and mix between rugged handsets and in-vehicle devices, the tender is valued between $3M to $5M and anticipated for delivery in the first half of 2020.

Since the beginning of Q4, the Company has announced a minimum of $6.5M to $9.0M of new business for its portfolio of 4G Push-to-Talk Over Cellular devices. The upper-end of this range being greater than its cellular device sales in the first three quarters of 2019 and greater than all of 2018 4G cellular device sales.