"...The problem now was that there was no end in sight. Here we are 2 ½ years later and companies have had to continually cut their coat to suit their cloth and are left little in the way of protection than a loin-cloth and some are down to a financial figleaf.
The stabilization of base metals and gold/silver’s upticks in the second half of 2013 managed to stop the rot and shone the focus onto production. If money could not be raised in any circumstance then the winners, by a process of exclusion, had to be those that generated their own money i.e. via being producers. Welcome to the age of production is king. Not only do producers need to produce (and do it at least in a cash-flow positive way) but those who are near production need to trumpet the fact. The old fallback of “we have a PEA, but we want to expand the resource before thinking of production” is a conversation killer with investors. We can barely suppress the urge to shout “Faker!” when we hear it. We don’t need to as the market can see these companies for what they are and they are not being funded.
Companies MUST have production or a production path.
This new imperative is not going away fast.. we would hesitate to use the word “never”, but if you do not perceive this change then you might as well be a brontosaurus after the meteor has landed.
With this colouring our view, the collateral damage from this paradigm shift can also be noted. This is bad news for explorers without a resource. This is terrible news for drillers and (nary a dry eye in the house) it’s dire new for consultants that do NI 43-101 reports and suchlike paraphernalia. It’s bad for the whole industry of announcements for announcements sake, the IR firms, the news release distributors and the conference booth floggers.
The King is Dead, Long Live the King..."
