In the end we are all just speculating here, I just base my guesses on the probably 50-100 interviews I have watched with Keith and my understanding of him as a businessman. The man is a bold visionary in the industry and he is a very long term investor. We have to keep this in mind when thinking about his potential long term plans for both companies. Regarding Jerritt Canyon, Keith actually stated in a recent interview that they already knew they had to shut it down when they bought it but they could not do that immediately because it would look quite bad, so they tried to keep it up and running for a while when they started doing the planned changes, but eventually it just became too costly. There is an interview with Keith where he goes into very detailed plans for the Jerritt Canyon mine, so I trust him to restart that operation within a year or two. My understanding is it will produce nice cash flow at these gold prices. Of course, if and when he turns Jerritt Canyon back to profitability it will give a nice confidence boost to the FM board that they indeed can (and should) expand more into US/Canada and gold. People often forget that 50% of FM revenues are still coming from gold, so it is just as much a gold company even though the focus is on silver. My bet would be that after Jerritt Canyon is turned around, the time will be very ripe for FM to make a potential move on FFMG because the Springpole permits would be in place by then and Duparquet would also have been drilled out nicely. Keep in mind that FM already owns the silver stream from Springpole anyways so a potential JV there could very well be in the cards later. I don't see how or why the board would be against such a move if Jerritt Canyon has been turned back into profitability.
I think Keith is being very protective of the FFMG assets because, like I said earlier, he knows how rare these types of assets are and when jurisdiction has become even more important in recent years (look what happened in Panama recently) it makes both Springpole and Duparquet even more valuable.
I know investors would like to rush things and are anxious after such a long wait but FFMG really is in no rush here to do deals because, in the end, Keith is the one who will make the final call when a big deal will present itself. They really must and should look at every possible card here regarding developing their assets before they commit to anything. Rushing into a bad deal just to satisfy investors would be very stupid after such a long wait. Dan is the CEO but the fact of the matter is that he talks to Keith about everything that happens in FFMG and if Keith does not approve something it wont get done. This is very clear from every interview you can find where both Dan and Keith are answering questions. I don't think Keith gives a s**t if retail investors don't have the patience to wait things out. He knows where this company is going and he won't pressure Dan to make any stupid decisions just to satisfy investors greed. That is one reason also why the stock has been going down for a while because they don't try to "pump it" up for no reason. Having said that, I really think we are right now in the final phase before the big breakout will occur because all stars are slowly aligning themselves. We are 1 year or so away from having a fully EA permitted tier 1 gold asset in Canada that is also one of the biggest undeveloped gold mines. This will be developed because everyone in the region needs it to be developed. It will be a massive cash flow monster for the region and create hundreds of well paying jobs and tax revenues for the government.
I could go on and on but eventually time will of course show how this story will end. I for sure will go all the way on this one and I think we will be massively rewarded soon.
