|
Es gibt ein neues Interview mit Gobind Sahney: By John Harrington April 19 2013, Gobind Sahney, chairman of StratMin, wants to know why the share price is not two, even three times higher. “I look at our peers, and I see what they are doing, and the market cap that they’re achieving, and wonder why we aren’t more highly valued,” he asks. Those peers are other listed miners operating in the graphite space. “We’re exploration/production, and this is where we think we’re undervalued in the market, because if you look at our peer group, they’re pretty much still in the exploration stage; a few of them have got beyond that – I think one has got the bankable feasibility study phase, but they still need to raise the money to raise the plant – that’s over US$100mln. “In today’s market [raising that money] is a challenge. “Where we stand, we not only have the resources, we have the plant to exploit that,” Sahney said. The plant has the capacity to process 1,000 tonnes a month of high grade flake graphite. StratMin is ramping up output towards that capacity and, depending on demand, there is the opportunity to add on more capacity. “The plant has been constructed on a modular fashion, we can put on additional flotation cells, we can increase the size of the pipes, we can add extra volume capacity,” Sahney disclosed. However, that’s a decision for further down the road. Right now, the company is focused on making the best of what it has got. “I think that what we want to do, we want to show that we have a business, and a business means that you have revenue. There are too many businesses that have too much cost. Here, we have revenue, and eventually profit. “We’re installing our own lab. The lab will allow us to do our own assays without having to send samples away and wait for them to come back. We have our own sizing screens to size materials on site, so we can vary the sizes of the large flake and we get better prices for them and that improves our margins. These are parts of the production process that over the next 30, 60, 90 days will come into play. Currently, we have over 150 tonnes of graphite that we have on site that we'll size. So, we’re focused on not just production for production’s sake; we’re focused on production for sales’ sake.” The inclusion of a lab on site is one example of the company’s quest for self-sufficiency, a strategic imperative that is influenced by the fact that Madagascar is an island. “The island is improving in terms of working with natural resource companies, but in our situation, we like to be self-sufficient. “We’ve spent money on critical spares, we’re judiciously recruiting people – one of the challenges is finding the right personnel down there, and so we’re doing that – and I think, as time goes on, Madagascar will improve, because they are getting the benefit of these larger companies that are investing in it, and after a while, people will realise this is not like working in Africa, because Madagascar thinks of itself as Indian Ocean, as opposed to Africa,” Sahney explains. StratMin’s contentment with Madagascar does not mean it is not looking at opportunities in other parts of the world and applying its low cost production model. Wherever it goes, however, it is likely that the company’s focus will remain on graphite. “We like the graphite space; we think that is an area that is going to be – in terms of the minerals, there is going to be big demand. We feel comfortable in that space. I think last year the market was valued at US$12bn. We’re just a small player in it right now but, you know, compared to our [publicly quoted] peers, we’re the only one in production. “We feel very positive that various opportunities are going to be open to us; we might execute on some,” Sahney reckons. Sahney likes graphite because, in terms of usage, it straddles the old world and the new. “This is one of the reasons we like this mineral, because it is firmly anchored in a lot of old world uses, such as brake linings, refractory, crucibles, any sort of molten metal refining process is going to have a graphite component to it, because it is a high temperature dry lubricant.” “Then you have all these new applications coming out, smartphones have a little bit of graphite stored in them; lithium-ion batteries have more graphite on them than lithium, and that’s not just for electric vehicles – batteries are used for mobile phones, uninterruptible power supplies, all these things. That’s sort of the new world use for graphite.” The end users clearly operate in very different fields, and rather than attempting to track them all down and sell to them, StratMin is offloading its graphite through marketing agents. “These marketing agents are very well established. They’ve been around for, in one case, 135 years, and in another case, almost 85 years. “They know the end users. Marketing agents have a commission that is very low compared to fielding your own sales force. Based on our margins it is more of a profitable way of selling. They know every end user out there, not just the guys who make brake linings or crucibles, but also the high-tech guys. “So, for us, it is kind of like, you know what? We’ll tell ‘em every month how much we have, and they’ll sell it. “They’re incentivised. The higher the price, the better the commission they get.” The same probably applies to Sahney and StratMin’s share price, but his bafflement at the share price performance seems genuine. “We put out that news [the March update] with probably more information than a junior miner needed to put out. We wanted the market to know we’re working for you; we’re doing the right thing. “I think we’ve come a long way,” he concludes. |
|
| aus der Diskussion: | Stratmin Global Resources - eine Graphitperle? |
| Autor (Datum des Eintrages): | tpnl (19.04.13 16:22:24) |
| Beitrag: | 29 von 49 (ID:44470923) |
| Alle Angaben ohne Gewähr © wallstreetONLINE | |