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[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: April 11, 2005

That Was The Week That Was ….. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. You are looking a bit more cheerful, London Correspondent

LC. Yes. For a change the mood in London was mostly positive, with the sector putting on 1.3 per cent in value excluding the new joiners. In fact, it was the busiest week in terms of new arrivals for months with five companies arriving on AIM and one joining OFEX. By a small margin the largest of the newcomers was Matt Sutcliffe’s Alexander Mining with a closing value of £43.7m, followed by Gravity Diamonds, Rambler Metals, Landore Resources, Alba Minerals and lastly, Fundy which finished the week on OFEX with a capitalisation of £3.6m.

Interestingly, apart from Alexander, all of these floats were handled by the smaller brokers - which leads your correspondent to wonder just what the other larger brokers are up to. Anecdotally, everyone is flat out working on new issues to impact before the summer slowdown so no doubt there is still a lot to look forward to this year.

Next week the market is expected to be somewhat slower in terms of both quantity and quality though Table Mountain Minerals (which seems to be a large cash shell) and something called Churchill Mining are due. On the other hand, Hereward is set to dispose of its remaining mining assets and focus full-time on exploring for oil and gas.

Minews. Never heard of Churchill or Table Mountain. Maybe they are hoping to creep in quietly.

LC. The week’s best performer was New Millennium, which gained 50 per cent to end at 5.25p after it announced that it had commenced production at its Rio Lapi diamond mine in Angola. It has also recently acquired a set of prospecting data generated in the late 1970s, from which it hopes to identify a site for a second producing unit. This is of course excellent news for New Millennium; a company which has something of a chequered past under previous management. It will be remembered that the company started off a few years ago looking for tantalum and niobium in Greenland.

Second up was Marakand which moved up by 36 per cent to finish the week at 34p. Again, the move was driven by the release of positive news, though in this case it was the announcement that it has completed the environmental and social impact assessment for its Khandiza project in Uzbekistan. Some final approvals are still needed but the company hopes to start with development in the near future.

Another stock on the move was African Gold, which added 17 percent to finish at 6.75p after releasing an update on its gold exploration activities in Ghana. The latest drilling campaign at its Konongo licence has identified a new mineralised shear system including three parallel gold veins which have been traced over a length of more than 500 metres.

The UK’s last large domestic miner, UK Coal, had a good week after it announced that it had received a preliminary bid approach from an unnamed company. The ensuing speculation drove the stock up by some 12 percent to finish at 134p, which recovered all the ground lost after it cut its dividend. However, the company was at pains to point out that the discussions were at a preliminary stage and that a deal was very far from certain.

Inevitably, not every company was able to benefit from the improved sentiment, indeed some closed the week considerably down. The worst performer was Reefton, which has had a very lively time of late with the stock bouncing all over the place as the market absorbed a rapid succession of announcements regarding its exploration efforts in Namibia. In mid week it announced that it was about to engage legal counsel in an effort to accelerate the renewal of its Erongo and Skeleton Coast licences. The application to renew Erongo was submitted more than two years ago so clearly the Namibian authorities had not exactly been rushing to complete their deliberations. However, the announcement clearly had an effect and a couple of days later Reefton was able to announce that an early resolution was expected. However, the market was clearly left unconvinced and the stock closed the week a net 29 percent down at 4.25p.

Minews. I have had an interesting e-mail suggesting that it is not uranium at all, but thorium which is used in fluorescent lighting fixtures. Clearly this merits further investigation next week.

LC. Minmet’s recent run of poor form continued and the stock gave up another 21 percent to finish at 1.3p though there have been no significant announcements since the closure of the Bjorkdal mine a month ago.

Minews. Thanks, now it is good morning to our new Frankfurt Correspondent. Let’s see what happened on the German market, which seems to have quite a large number of Canadian and Australian companies listed on the Frankfurt and Berlin/Bremen Stock exchanges .

FC. Yes, that’s true. Most of these over 500 mining and exploration companies from Australia, Canada, South Africa and a growing number from the UK never knew that their shares are listed on the Berlin/Bremen and/or Frankfurt Exchange. A new initiative was started by the market makers on the Berlin/Bremen Stock Exchange half a year ago to list every single company which is listed on the ASX and now they are trying to complete the Canadian and US traded ones as well. Hard work, but a great offer for most retail and institutional investors to buy and sell these shares directly with much lower commissions on the German stock market.

Minews. Thanks for this background information about the German market which explains the growing interest from overseas companies in making a visit there to present their stories. Tell us more about the recent trading activities in Germany over the past week.

FC. The week over here was quite dull on the market, especially for the mining stocks. Most of the attention was focused over the whole week on an old forgotten story, Bougainville Copper. This company exists for an impresssive long time and their common shares and ADR’s are listed now on all German exchanges. The story of restarting this huge copper-gold mine on the famous island Bougainville in Papua New Guinea emerged at the end of last year after some initial reports from a guy named Swen Lorenz who works for a well known newsletter, called Global Profit Hunter. After the release of the recent annual report of Bougainville Copper two weeks ago, it seems like more and more Aussie investors are betting on a reopening of this gigantic copper mine, too. The shares gained 16 per cent or 0.10 Euro over the last five trading days to close at 0.72 Euro, after reaching a five year high of 0.78 Euro on Tuesday.

Another Australian company traded heavily in the last weeks on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange was another “flower power” company. As many of you should know the name Bougainville is related to the famous Bougainvillea plant which grows on the biggest of the Solomon islands, Orchid Capital was renamed from Adelong a few years ago as it still owns some Thai hotels. But since the end of last year they changed their cooperate focus from a disorientated holding company to some huge resource projects in the Tibet region of China. After different German research reports were published in the last two weeks, the latest one send out on last Monday took the shares up again to a intraday high of 0.109 Euro on Tuesday combined with a good volume of around 3 million shares traded on the Frankfurt Exchange. After that spike the share price consolidated down to the week’s low we saw on Friday’s close at 0.095 Euro and a drop of 8.7 per cent over the week.

Minews. What other stories attracted the interest of the investment community over there?

FC. Apart from these two top stories we saw some buying activity at the end of the week in a long time darling of the German retail traders some months ago, which is Tournigan Gold. The company with gold projects in Northern Ireland and Slovakia, published some news about a new gold related acquisition in Slovakia and some other rumours began buzzing around for another not gold related move in the coming weeks, maybe the magic word is ura.... . We will follow up on it as soon as something turns up on the surface. Tournigan shares closed at 0.164 Euro in Frankfurt a small gain of 2.5 per cent over the last weeks close, but far off its new all time low of 0.142 Euro it reached on Wednesday, after being listed on the Frankfurt market now for around two years.

Another volume mover for the coming week might be seen with UK-listed Marakand Minerals which started trading from below 0.40 Euro on Tuesday and closing at 0.50 EURO after it topped up to 0.55 EURO on Thursday on the Frankfurt exchange. The daily volume increased steadily over the week from nearly zero on Monday to a new volume peak of 170,000 shares traded on Friday, before a promotional buy recommendation reached my emailbox on late Friday afternoon.

Minews. We will watch it closely on the London market in the coming days where the buying interest is coming from. Any newcomers on the German market ?

LC. Not really well known companies, but with the trading debut of the Canadian juniors Aldridge Minerals, Capstone Gold and Canico and the Aussie junior Eurogold we will get some interesting additions in the coming days.

Minews. Thanks FC. Look forward to hearing from you next week.

[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: April 18, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Good morning London Correspondent. I expect you are glad you have been away.

LC. Yes. It was a particularly nasty week in London with the value of the junior mining and exploration sector falling by an average of almost 5.4 per cent. That makes it three negative weeks out of the last four and it is clear that a sharp correction is moving through the market as, indeed, happened at this time last year.

The pessimists have been calling the top of the market for mining stocks though the underlying supply and demand data for the base metals in particular does not support this view. Nevertheless, we could be in for a quiet period in terms of market interest in the sector which is bad news for those which had hoped to get their issues away before the summer holidays.

Two small companies arrived on AIM: Churchill Mining and Table Mountain Minerals. Churchill is a tiny clone of Consolidated Minerals and, like that company, is focussed on manganese in Australia. Table Mountain Minerals is currently a shell though proposes to invest in “Black Empowerment” deals in South Africa. Churchill closed the week slightly down on its IPO price whereas Table Mountain put on a most encouraging 70 per cent to finish at 8.5p.

The week’s best performer was Braemore Resources, one of the recent plague of cash shells; it added 82 percent to its value to close at 5p. The company did not see fit to issue an update, in fact it has yet to issue an RNS of any sort since it first arrived on the market a month or so ago. By an astonishing coincidence, the second best performer was sister shell Altona Resources, though this one only gained 30 per cent. Inevitably, there was no update for the market but no doubt the rumour machines (AKA bulletin boards) have been buzzing. Both companies are headed up by Jeremy Edelman who was last seen here some while ago when he was financial controller to Celtic Resources.

Third up was Namibian Resources which also gained 30 per cent though no-one seems to know why. By the end of the week the stock was trading at 48p which is almost back to the high point hit at the start of the year. In contrast Namibian Resources does actually do something - as the name partly suggests it recovers diamonds in Namibia.

Fourth up was a major surprise as Goldstone Resources put on nearly 24 per cent to finish at 13p following the issue of a major update. It is not immediately clear why the stock moved up as the drilling results were uniformly unexciting; indeed the best was 1.9 g/t over a width of only 0.3 m and most were below 0.5 g/t. Maybe it was the one-line announcement that the company is close to concluding a deal regarding its bauxite interests?

A few other stocks managed small gains but for most it was a week of gritted teeth and red screens. Fittingly, the worst performer was also a recent cash shell, Azman Resources, which gave up 50 per cent of its value to end the week at 1.75p. The move may have been crystallised by a small placement of stock at 2p which at the time was some way below the mid price.

Recently arrived gold explorer Central China Goldfields had a particularly rough week with a fall of some 30 per cent to end at 5.25p on no news. Central China raised its money at 8p and so the new shareholders are already looking at a loss of 35 percent after less than a month on the market.

Next up, or rather down, was one of last week’s newcomers, Gravity Diamonds. The stock gave up 21 per cent to end the week at 28p even though it raised no new money when it arrived on the AIM and has released no new news.

Minmet’s recent run of weakness continued with a further fall of 19 per cent to close barely above a penny. The company announced that it was transferring its listing from the Irish ESM market, which is closing, to the new IEX (Irish Enterprise Exchange) board. This is in contrast to most of the other ESM listed companies which have transferred to the AIM.

Minews. Thanks LC, now over to our Frankfurt Correspondent. What was the mood on the Frankfurt Market last week ? Hopefully you had some winners in this really depressing market situation. It looks like most of the resource investor are going for an early summer holiday this year and don’t care what mining stock they are selling at the moment.

FC. I agree that investors are depressed, but most of them aren’t selling on the German market. However, after this nearly ten per cent drop in the AMEX GOLD BUGS Index last week, it looks as if everybody is jumping off this precious metals train. In fact we saw a very quiet week with low volumes in most stocks and only a few stories which caught the attention of the remaining mining investors in the German speaking part of Europe.

DRDGold, the old Durban Roodeport Deep, was the one with the top volume in the mining stocks section on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange on Friday. The common shares and the ADR’s have been listed for a very long time on the German markets and over the years it became the darling for most retails investors in Germany. For many people who wanted to invest in the gold sector this company seemed to be the perfect gold option with no expiry. But what happened with that “darling” on the NASDAQ market in the last 15 minutes of trading on Thursday ?

Minenews : Now you caught our full attention to hear exclusively from you what’s the story about DRDGold ? First, however, I ought to tell you that in London the company and its management are well known and most people would not touch it with a long pole.

FC. In Germany it is different and I could not believe my eyes after the market closed in New York. A drop of 17.5 per cent from the close of US$0.80 on Wednesday down to US$0.66 on Thursday looked like a hard hit, but I checked more than one time the intraday low on my system, because I couldn’t believe what my screen showed to me. The share price got hammered to an intraday low of US$0.30 which is the lowest price in the last five years. It means the shares lost over 60 percent in a few seconds: unbelievable.

My first thoughts after realizing that it was no transmission error : Are they bankrupt now ? There is no clear answer to it at the moment, but perhaps sometimes in the near future we all will know more. The fact is that the share price began crashing 15 minutes before the close of the market with one or more heavy seller hitting the market with a volume of over one million shares. Just in a minute the share price collapsed and then recovered in the next minute with another million shares traded again. I don’t know why no newswire didn’t catch up on that story, but we do it now first.

Minenews : What was the reaction of the investors on the German market on Friday morning ?

FC. Like nothing really had happened on the day before. The shares opened at 0.57 Euro, dropped down to 0.55 Euro after a few minutes and gained some of their lost value to a intraday high of 0,61 Euro in the afternoon with the opening of the US market. They closed then at 0,58 Euro with a volume of 230.000 shares, a drop of 9.1 per cent over the week.

Minews. Thanks for that impressive story. Any more excitement for our readers ?

FC. Yes, I have one or two interesting trading activities for you. The first one was a Canadian company with some promising gold and silver assets in the Argentina and Chile. Exeter Resources gained over 13 per cent on the Frankfurt market on Monday with a heavy volume of around 415,000 shares traded, after they announced a new joint venture deal with Rio Tinto on a large land package of around 800 square kilometres in southern Chile. The share price began the week on Monday morning at 0.75 Euro and hit its peak at 0.88 Euro in the late afternoon, closing then at 0.85 Euro. But despite these good news and a special online chat invitation for German speaking investors on Thursday the share price ended the week at the same price as it closed the week before. Looks a lot of effort with no real value adding outcome for most of the investors.

Now to the only real winner on the German market on Friday. Aflease Gold & Uranium. Many will remember the old name Afrikander Lease and it gained over 13 per cent on Friday after a well known German newsletter, called the Commodity Stocks Investor put out a strong buy recommendation. After opening at 0.37 Euro the volume got a heavy lift in the early evening and hit a intraday high of 0.45 Euro just in a few minutes. Overall the volume was not but markets were thin and buying was concentrated ahead of the weekend.

Minews. Afrikander Lease, sorry I mean Aflease Uranium & Gold, looks like another attempt to jump on the uranium bandwagon. It’s a good thing some one likes South African stocks as we are very wary of them over here. Incidentally, I hear you are going to attend the European Gold Show in Zurich next week. Please look out for some interesting stories and rumours for us and we will look forward to get your update next week.

[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: April 25, 2005

That Was The Week Tht Was ..... In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Good morning. London Correspondent. I gather mining stocks were none to cheery last week.

LC. Correct.The weak markets persisted in London with the junior mining sector giving up a further 1.6 per cent in value, even though the underlying commodity markets seem to have calmed down. Three new companies joined the AIM and, for a change, all three actually have assets.

By some way the largest was Platinum Mining Corporation India, which basically intends to do what the name says. It has acquired an interest in a chromite mining operation in the state of Orissa, and is working on a feasibility study to evaluate the potential for recovering platinum group metals. The stock enjoyed a good first week on the market and by the close had gained 9 per cent to finish at 24p.

In sharp contrast, one of the week’s other two starters had a miserable time of it. Copper Resources joined the market on Thursday having raised funds at 100p but by Friday afternoon had given up more than 30 per cent to close at 69.5p. The broker to the issue, ODL, is new to the junior mining sector and clearly is on a steep learning curve. For what it is worth, the company is trying to advance the Hinoba-an copper project in the Philippines. Hinoba-an is a project that has been known about for a considerable period of time - in the last mining boom it was held by a Stephen Dattels company named International Pursuit.

Minews. I never heard a word about Copper Resources so presumably no real attempt was made on the promotional side.

LC. Sounds like it. The third and by some way the smallest new joiner was South China Resources which intends to develop a copper-molybdenum project in China named Danfeng. The stock closed the week at 4.75p some 5 percent below its starting price.

The week to come should see one new arrival, Coal International. This has just closed a £20m fundraising for what is basically a shell looking to invest in the coal sector, predominantly in the USA and Russia. The management team is closely associated with Western Canadian Coal and Cambrian Mining, both of which already trade on the AIM.

Minews. Can’t write about it till it gets an asset, but I may take a look at South China Resources when I get an actual prospectus.

LC. On the market the best performance was a 31 per cent gain to 1.375p made by Minmet, reversing a recent trend of considerable weakness. There was more than a whiff of dead cat about the move, as the company had no new news to report.

Next up was Cambridge Mineral Resources which put on 20 per cent to end at 9p after it announced that David Bramhill had resigned as Managing Director and was being replaced by Colin Andrew. Colin clearly enjoys considerable support in the City dating right back to the late 1980s when he brought Navan to the market.

One of the features of every mining boom is that at some point Anglesey Mining will raise a small amount of money with the intention of restarting work at its Parys Mountain copper-zinc project in North Wales. It remains to be seen quite how far it gets with less than £0.5m of new money but at least it is better than nothing. At any rate the market liked the story and the stock closed up almost 19 per cent at 4.75p.

Another company to benefit from a restart was Centamin Egypt which, at long last, seems to have resolved its differences with the Egyptian Government and is to restart drilling at its highly promising Sukhari Hill gold project. At one point during the week the stock was up by more than 20 per cent but the negative mood in the market then took its toll and by the close the net gain was only just over 10 per cent to end at 15.5p. Coincidentally (or not) one of the other few companies that are exploring in Egypt, Gippsland, fell by nearly 17 percent after Centamin’s announcement, though Gippsland has not issued any news for a month or so.

On the negative side the worst of the large number of fallers was Reefton, which seems to be getting a quite disproportionate amount of coverage these days. The stock started the week strongly after it reported that it had discovered uranium in geochemistry at its Erongo project in Namibia. However, the CEO, Simon Gilbert, was clearly less than thrilled by the prospects as by the end of the week he had resigned in order to “pursue other commercial opportunities” following the managing director out of the door.. This left the market thoroughly confused and the stock ended the week down 19 percent at 3.25p

Minews. Thanks LC. Hello again to our German correspondent who spent most of the week at the European Gold Forum in Zurich. I gather this event is the most prestigeous one in the gold sector in the German speaking part of Europe. Tell us more about it.

FC. It was and still is the only two day gold related event in Germany and Switzerland but only around 100 money managers, investment fund managers, bankers, journalist and some IR/PR related business people showed up there. I looks like the organisers had the same problem as many others before. They didn’t manage it to reach the whole Swiss/German financial community and no private investor had a chance to attend this conference which is in my opinion is a bad point for everybody.

There aren’t as many institutional investors in Switzerland and parts of Germany and Austria who are interested in the mining sector than you have in the UK or North America so it must be time that the organising companies understood the Swiss/German mentality and open up these conferences to everybody at no cost. Often North American mining companies have no real retail shareholder support, but the question is why nobody is working to change it. Some people in Germany and Switzerland have taught this lesson to some smaller exploration or production companies in the last two or three years and I know a dozen of them who are really happy with strong retail support mainly out of Germany

Minenews : An interesting comment. What were the most exciting stories at the conference you sorted out from 30 companies presenting there at the famous Baur au Lac near the Lake Zurich ?

FC. First of all most I noticed the fact that many analysts and journalists came there to meet and hear the presentations of the emerging producers or advanced exploration plays. I personally liked the presentations and the potential of Orezone and Solitario Resources to give you two of my favorites.

Minenews : Any rumours you think could be of interest for our readers, too ?

FC. Yes, on top of my list is the never ending rumour of a takeover or more takeovers from Golden Star a emerging gold producer in West Africa. This company had his own operational problems for a long time last year, but now their CEO moved to the minesite in Ghana and it looks more promising than ever before. The main target of their aquisition growth plan could be the small Australian junior Moto Goldmines This company is well known and heavily promoted in Germany for the last twelve months, because it is run by the German mining consultant Klaus Eckhof. The shares of Moto Goldmines started the week at 0.21 Euro, and moved up steadily every day to close the week in Frankfurtat 0.26 Euro which shows that these rumours are spreading out and we will see if a offer emerges out of that in the near future.

Minews. A rumour which could make sense. Any other volume mover on the German stock exchange ?

FC. After coming back from Switzerland I checked the chat boards and there is only one company which caught my attention again and that’s the Canadian gold explorer Eaglecrest Explorations. That company is run by Paul Zdebiak, a ex-broker who is well known in Vancouver for many years and created a positive following in Germany, too. He started with his gold venture in Bolivia at a time where nobody wanted to got there and had some tough years to raise some money to clean off a debt burdened balance sheet. Just two weeks ago the shares broke out from their long term trading range between C$0.10and C$0.15 . The shares are trading now for over two years on the Frankfurt Exchange and the r development program in Bolivia ow seems to be attracting investors as they closed at C$0.22 which equates to to nearly 14 eurocents.

Minews. Thanks Frankfurt Correspondent. Talk to you next week.

[Goldreport]

http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=708


Feature Story
Date: May 02, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Hello London Correspondent. Gather you are away for the holiday weekend after a somewhat miserable week.

LC. The mood in London is grim after the value of the junior mining sector fell by more than 5 per cent over the course of the week. The major miners also fell sharply though ended up oversold and by the close had staged something of a recovery. The underlying cause would seem to be concerns that commodity prices may have topped as LME stocks of both copper and aluminium have started to rise, albeit slowly and, in the case of copper at least, from a very low level.

On the other hand, the fundamental gap between supply and demand for most commodities is still very real and the outlook is for it to remain so for at least the next couple of years. However, that is not the message that the market is currently listening to.

Minews. That is certainly what Rob Davies has been saying in his weekly Commodities column.

LC .Unsurprisingly, given the state of the market, the recent flood of miners and explorers joining the AIM has now reduced to a trickle. The week saw just one new arrival, a cash shell named Coal International that has raised £20m to invest in coal assets in Russia and the USA. The stock had a reasonable debut considering the state of the market and by the close had gained 3 per cent to finish at 77.5p. The week to come should two new arrivals on AIM: Magnesium International and Eastern Mediterranean Resources.

A few of the smaller stocks did manage to post some respectable gains, though for the great majority the selling pressure was relentless and buyers were clearly sitting back waiting for signs of a turn. There was not much in the way of newsflow and most of the larger moves seem to have been driven by the usual combination of rumour and speculation.

Ovoca Resources managed to gain 32 per cent to end the week at 9.25p which presumably signals that some good news is expected as the company has not released an update since last month. Similarly, African Diamonds reversed its recent negative trend to close at 62.5p, a gain of 24 per cent. Most of African Diamonds’ run occurred on Friday which would suggest that an announcement may be expected next week. There are apparently rules that should prevent those with advance knowledge from trading the stocks in question, but clearly these have not worked in these cases (assuming of course that news is coming).

Minews. How right you are. We are making a lists of companies where there are regular share movements ahead of announcements. Could surprise a few people.

LC Anglesey Mining continued its run up after the previous week’s announcement that it had completed a fundraising and was to restart work on its Parys Mountain project. At one point the stock was trading above 7p but it then fell victim to day-traders taking profits and it closed at 5.75p, up a net 21 per cent.

On the negative side, most of the worst performers were small cash shells which were hit hard as speculators stampeded for the door. The worst performer amongst those companies that actually profess to do something was Conroy Diamonds and Gold, which fell by 35 per cent to 2.75p as speculators bailed out - there was no new news to report.

Tertiary Minerals had a bit of a rough week; it lost some 29 per cent of its value to end at 6p. The company announced that it was in the process of splitting off its diamond interests into a new company: Sunrise Diamonds. Some seed capital was raised for Sunrise though more will be needed before it floats on AIM.

The suspension of Petra Diamonds was finally lifted after it published the necessary documentation relating to its merger with Crown Diamonds. At the same time it announced that it had raised £17m at 85p which was substantially below the price at which the stock was suspended. The company presumably took all of the money on offer as there was no demand left for the after-market and by the end of the week it had given up a further 7.5p to close at 77.5p, a net fall of 18 per ent from the
price at suspension.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now over to Germany, where the summer has arriving fast in the last few days. How was the week on the Frankfurt market, hopefully not only clouds were hanging over the market last week ?

FC. No, there weren’t too many new stories getting the attention of the German mining community, but some of well known names here in Frankfurt moved up and down with quite huge volumes. The big winner was again as predicted last week the Canadian gold junior Eaglecrest Exploration mentioned by your Canadian correspondent. On the downside Bougainville Copper got a hard hit last week, after some investors took some gains off the table without any real bad news.

Only a few small North American companies like Golden Eagle, Franklin Mining, Orvana Minerals, Apogee Minerals and the big american silver companies Coeur D’Alene and Apex Silver have worked in Bolivia over the years. Eaglecrest has performed better than all of them in recent weeks. The last news release hit the wires about a week ago, but it seems some Canadian and European investors are betting on further positive drilling results in the weeks ahead. The shares started trading on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange at 0.12 Euro and closed with a impressive gain of 50 per cent over the week at 0.18 Euro on Friday. Indications from Canada are that it could perform even better next week.

Minews It’s interesting to hear this story from you, because here in London only a few people ever heard of this small Canadian company. Now tell us more about Bougainville as it seems to be a favourite of German investors.

FC. Yes, most of the German buyers were following the recommendations of a small number of newsletters covering that sector, so they were hit hard when the shares dropped 24.6 per cent to 0.46 Euro during the week. Maybe a few of the speculators are trying to shake out some of the nervous or weak holders to buy more shares at a lower price. We will see next week, but the volume of shares traded last Friday alone was very high.

Minenews : Any other stories or rumours out of Germany we should pay attention to ?

FC. Yes, a short comment about the Canadian company Corriente, which hit a new 18 months low last week. The company tries to tell their investors to keep calm about the recent political situation in Ecuador, but the investors are getting out of the stock for the second week in a row. Not much fun for the management team as it recently got a very positive research comment from Wellington West’s analyst with a price target of C$5.00 only a short time ago.

Minews. Are there any new arrivals on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange ?

FC. Sorry, I have just forgot to report about them. The most important was the second largest uranium producer in Canada, Denison Mines. This dual listing will add some real good uranium exposure for the uranium bugs and with their new Uranium Participation stock coming to the market in the near term as a direct investment opportunity in the uranium yellow cake market we should take a closer look at them. The Canadian juniors North American Gold and YGC Resources will also have their trading debut on Tuesday.

Minews. Thanks FC. Have a good weekend in Bavaria. Don’t forget London has a holiday on Monday.

[Goldreport]

http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=718


Feature Story
Date: May 09, 2005

That Was The Week That Was ….. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Hello London Correspondent. Gather you feel investors should not be sucked in by the sector uptick as it is still grim on the street

LC. That’s right. In contrast to the previous week’s carnage, mining investors in London had something to be cheerful about with the sector gaining just over 1 per cent in value by the close. However, it would be distinctly unwise at this stage to call the turning point - investor exhaustion has not gone away. Indeed, this was highlighted by the fact that the week saw only one new arrival and even that was only a compliance quote on AIM for Aussie listed Magnesium International with no new money raised.

The other newcomer that had been expected, Eastern Mediterranean Resources, had clearly run into problems in completing its fundraising and so its arrival has slipped back to next week.

In addition to Eastern Mediterranean, the coming week should see the arrival on AIM of Serabi Mining and Afcan where they will be joined by Beowulf which is moving up from OFEX. Serabi is mining high grade gold in Brazil whereas Afcan, which is already listed in Toronto, is in the process of constructing a gold mine in China.

On the market, winners and losers were fairly evenly matched with most of the larger share price movements being seen down amongst the penny stocks where large bid/offer spreads often have a disproportionate impact.

As an illustration, AIM Resources was the week’s largest mover with a 50 per cent gain in terms of mid-price movement relative to the previous week though at the close the stock was showing an offer price of 2.75p yet the bid was only 1.75p. Good business for the market makers though investors buying in would need to see the stock gain 58 per cent just to be able to exit at their entry price. Nevertheless, investors were seemingly pleased that its proposed acquisition of an interest in
the Mooiplats platinum project in South Africa had fallen through after the Ministry failed to complete the transfer of the licence. Another illustration, if one was needed, of the extent to which South Africa has fallen from favour in London as a destination for speculative mining money.

Next up was Metals Exploration, which added 34 per cent to its value to close the week at 11.88p. The company did not release any new news, though the market may have remembered an announcement of a month ago which stated that drilling on its Masapelid gold project in the Philippines is due to start last week.

Of the larger stocks, Highland Gold stood out with an 11 per cent gain to close at 207.5p after Barrick Gold injected about US$50million in cash by acquiring new shares at a price of 230p. This will take Barrick’s interest in Highland from 13.7 per cent to 20 per cent, which would suggest that it is in for the long haul. Barrick’s other partner company in Russia, Celtic Resources, was unchanged on the week with the market understandably sceptical that its long-running deal negotiations with IG Alrosa will really be wrapped up this month.

In spite of the improved sentiment, quite a few stocks still managed to lose value during the week. The worst performers were Hambledon and South China, which both lost 20 per cent of their value to close at 7p and 4p respectively. Hambledon has not released any significant news since March though an update is almost due regarding the feasibility study on its Sekisovskoye/Tserkovka gold project in Kazakhstan. South China has only been on the market for a month and has yet to make an announcement of any significance.

Another recent arrival, Gravity Diamonds, has been having a rough time of it and by the end of the week had lost 18 per cent to end at 22.5p even though the previous week’s quarterly release seemed to be quite positive.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now let’s jump over to our Frankfurt Correspondent, who is working hard coordinating two mining events. First is the Stockday Mining & Exploration 2005 in the middle of next week. Then our 1st Minesite German Forum will take place on Tuesday , the 24th of May

So what stories did you hear last week on the Frankfurt market, FC, beside working on these two mining conferences ?

FC. You are right, after last week I know what the word busy means. Despite the very slow recovering resource markets in Canada and Australia we had some good volumes in a few junior companies mainly at the beginning of last week.

Let’s start with the biggest volume mover on Tuesday on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. That was the Australian junior Tiger Resources, a small good promoted junior with a new acquisition last week. Over 2.5 million shares changed hands on Tuesday when the shares rose by 38 per cent to Euro 0.18, which is quite dramatic compared to a normal turnover of 100,000 to 200,000 shares. But the runup was short lived as Aussie investors didn’t understand the move and the shares ended the week with a drop of over 10 per cent.

Minenews : Tell us a little more about Tiger Resources as we have never heard of it in London

FC. Klaus Eckhoff who is running Moto Goldmines is the key person again, a name which should ring some bells in your mind. You wrote an interesting article about this company’s operations in the north of the Congo a few weeks ago. Moto Goldmines is the next company I should mentioned, because after boosting its current resources to over 6 million ounces of gold the share price took a hit down to Euros 0.22 on Wednesday. Fortunately it recovered over the next two trading days and ended the week up 8 per cent.

Perhaps for some of the real rumour hunters in our readership I should bring up the name of Sabre Resources. A cleaned up Australian shell which has some kind of secret relationship with Tiger and Moto Goldmines. This stock could the next real mover from the famous Balcatta boys in the next few weeks.

Minews. Tell us a little bit more which companies are coming over to that junior exploration event in Frankfurt this week.

FC. Yes, no problem. I hope we will see some shares moving up with that event starting on Tuesday in Frankfurt. Two companies are taking the long trip from Australia. First of all the gold junior Sub-Sahara Resources and second the oil and gas explorer Norwest Energy. On the other hand we have quite a long list of 12 companies from Canada presenting at that Mining & Exploration show. Just to give you the names of them, because I suspect some of them will take a stop in London a few days after the Frankfurt and Zurich event, too. We will have Aldridge Minerals, Acero-Martin Exploration, Halo Resources, Eaglecrest Explorations, Osisko Exploration, Panoro Minerals, Sabina Resources, Silverado Gold Mines, Southern Silver, Vangold Resources and Vedron Gold. Hope I don’t forgot any of them.

Minews. Quite an impressive list . Investors will need to listen carefully and have plenty of strong coffee to hand to sort out the good ones from the bad ones.

FC. Oops, sorry to interrupt you. I just forgot one company, perhaps the highlight of that conference. It’s the Canadian junior Alexandria Minerals which will get a lot of attention because it intends to list on the Venture Exchange in the next two or three weeks. But now that’s all.

Minews. Ok. Have a nice and not too busy week and we look forward to hearing from you next week again.

[Goldreport]

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Feature Story
Date: May 16, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Good morning London Correspondent. I see no smile on your face. Was it that bad?

LC. In London it was business as usual with the junior mining sector resuming its slide. Overall, the sector gave up just over 3 perc ent in value excluding new issues and departures to finish with an overall value of just under £6.2 billion. More than £1 billion has now been wiped off the value of London’s junior mining sector since the high point of just over £7.2 billion reached in the middle of March, and so it is not surprising that the institutional investors are shying away from making new commitments to the sector.

Even so, the week saw three new arrivals on AIM with Beowulf moving up from OFEX to join Eastern Mediterranean and Serabi Mining. By the end of the week both Eastern Mediterranean and Serabi were trading fractionally above their issue prices, which should be considered a positive result in the circumstances.

AFCAN had also planned to join the AIM last week but this was postponed at a very late stage with rumours of problems with the two largest shareholders (RAB and Caledon Resources) over the terms of the fundraising. Unsurprisingly given the state of the market, there are no new arrivals scheduled for the week to come.

Arcon Resources was delisted at the end of the week following completion of its takeover by Lundin Mining. Arcon was first listed in the mid-1980s as Conroy Petroleum and Natural Resources and for almost its entire life has been focussed on the development and operation of the Galmoy zinc-lead mine in Ireland. Galmoy has now been in production for more than a decade and at present is enjoying what is by far its best period of profitability. However, for most of its existence it has been struggling to survive in the face of weak metal prices. Indeed, were it not for the continuing support of its largest shareholder, Tony O’Reilly, sorry Dr Anthony O,Reilly, it would have probably gone under some while ago.

On the market there was little to be cheerful about with falls exceeding rises by a ratio of around two to one. Excepting tiny shells bouncing up and down on no news, the best performance was made by South China Resources which gained 12 per cent (0.5p) to finish at 4.5p though there was no news to report.

Of the larger companies Firestone Diamonds stood out with an 11 pe rcent gain to end the week at 144p following the announcement that Tim Wilkes had joined the company from De Beers to head up the development of the company’s mineral portfolio. Mr Wilkes was previously General Manager Mineral Resource Management with De Beers and his appointment was clearly seen by the market as a strong statement that Firestone intends to accelerate the development of its portfolio.

Braemore Resources, one of the recent rash of tiny cash shells, was suspended from trading at 5.75p as it announced that it is to acquire a substantial nickel tailings retreatment project in Australia. The deal constitutes a reverse takeover under the AIM rules and so the stock will remain suspended until an admission document is published.

A few other companies did manage small gains but that was about it on the positive side for the week. On the downside the worst performer was Reefton, which lost 29 per cent to finish at 2.5p. There was no specific news to report but Reefton has been going through a particularly bumpy period which culminated in the recent resignation of its CEO.

Shareholders in recent arrival Copper Resources are having a miserable time with the stock giving up a further 25 per cent to end the week at 49.5p. This company has now managed to halve in value since it arrived on AIM only three weeks ago after raising £4 million at 100p per share. Another recent arrival that has been struggling since it arrived on AIM is Alexander Mining, which gave up a further 13 per cent to end at 22.25p. At one point the stock was trading below 20p, representing a 26 percent fall since its IPO a little over a month ago.

Out of the major producers, Highland Gold suffered the worst fall, giving up 15 per cent to finish the week at 176p. This will not please major shareholder Barrick which has just injected US$50million by acquiring new shares at 230p.


Minews. Thanks LC. Good Morning to our Frankfurt Correspondent. How was your week over there, and was there any excitement at the Stockday Mining & Exploration 2005 events in Frankfurt and Zurich ?

FC. First of all the the German mining stock market was relatively flat this week, with a few exceptions I will explain to you later on. The Stockday Event in Frankfurt on Tuesday got an audience of around 80 people and the highlight was the Gala Dinner in the famous Old Opera Building. During the day there had been around 14 presentations from different junior mining companies operating in different parts of the world. The show then moved on to Zurich, but the audience was pitiful...

Minews. Sad to hear that. Anyway, tell us more about your favourites and any rumours you picked up.

FC. To tell you the truth I have only one real favourite out of the mining companies attending this show and that was Southern Silver, , a company formed out of the shell Newcoast Silver just half a year ago. It’s now run by the well known Manex Group out of Vancouver. The company acquired a few months ago a option to get a 100 per cent interest in the Pinabete concession in southern Chihuahua state in Mexico from Anglo American.. A first drilling programm will start shortly and as I was told it looks like some very exciting targets were found in the last few weeks. Very important to mention here is the fact that the geologist working on the property was involved in Western Silver’s huge silver discovery in Mexico, too.

Minews. Anything else happening on the Frankfurt market last week ?

FC. Yes, I have to bring your attention to two companies I mentioned a few weeks ago. Large volume took place in Bougainville Copper, but this time sellers had the whip hand following the AGM. Aussie investors set the pace for German retail investors and the shares fell 16.5 per cent to Euros 0.40 on the week..

Minews. Now the second company which hopefully went up rather than down.

FC. Yes, the last mover and shaker is a good one for us too, because the company will attend our 1st Minesite Germany Forum on Thursday, the 24th of May in Frankfurt. Sorry for the “marketing” but I’m just excited to see some real news and trading in the stock before our mining event will take place. It’s the Canadian gold junior Tournigan Gold which is focussed on projects in Europe, mainly Northern Ireland and Slovakia. The rumour mill doesn’t stop grinding of some new acquisitions on the horizon in the near term. The shares made a gain of over 10 % for the week closing at Euros 0.155 on the Frankfurt market. Hopefully more to follow on this one next week.

Minews. Ok. Thanks for the update and we look forward to hearing from you next week..

[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: May 23, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt

Minews. Gather from the look on your face that you are not a happy man, London Correspondent

LC. No. It was another nasty week for London’s junior mining sector with falls exceeding rises by around three to one. In total, the sector fell by almost 4 percent to end the week with a total value of just over £6 billion. The main underlying reason for the continuing fall is that many commodity prices are looking distinctly weak with quite a few commentators calling for them to fall further. Some specific issues are also damaging the sector including political unrest in Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan and a sudden fall from favour for stocks associated with Frank Timis after some disappointing exploration results from Regal Petroleum led to a price collapse.

Minews. I’ve always been amazed that he has been able to list anything, considering his early career in Perth.

LC. Quite so. The spate of IPOs has virtually ground to a halt with no new arrivals on the market during the week. One small company, Sirius Exploration, hopes to join the AIM next week but apart from that it is looking very quiet in terms of corporate activity.

The week’s best performer was Central African Gold which managed to gain some 24 per cent to close at 4.5p. There was no news to support the move but the company has not made an announcement since September last year so presumably an update is due.

Next up was recent arrival Landore which for no obvious reason gained nearly 17 per cent to end the week at 7p. Similarly, Anglesey Mining added 16 percent to its value to end at 6.25p on no news.

Amongst the larger companies the best performance was the 11 per cent gain made by Aquarius Platinum to close the week at 271p. Investors have been quick to factor in the effect of the recent weakness in the rand which should feed through into an improvement in operating margins.

At last, some light at the end of the tunnel for South Africa’s beleaguered miners. On which note it is good to see that Harmony’s attempt to take over Gold Fields has finally come to an end. It will be interesting to see how Bernie Swanepoel justifies the US$50m bill when he next presents to Harmony’s shareholders.

The worst performance of the week was suffered by Marakand which lost almost 24 per cent in value to close at 22p. The reason, obviously, was the unrest in Uzbekistan which unnerved shareholders in spite of an update stating that the company’s operations at Khandiza in the south east of the country were unaffected. However, it is worth remembering that the company does not yet have a final contract for developing the concession and so any political disruption may delay the process. Sister company Oxus was similarly hit with a net fall of nearly 15 percent to close the week at 47.75p. At one point the stock was trading nearly 30 per cent down on the week but a conference call for institutional investors steadied nerves and some of the lost ground was recovered. Palladex, which is exploring in Kyrgyzstan, was also hit by poor sentiment about the region and gave up 16 per
cent to end at 7.75p.

Recent arrival Copper Resources continued to slip away; over the course of the week it lost another 20 per cent to end at 39.5p, some 60 per cent down on its IPO price of a month ago. This compares with the 273p valuation claimed in the recent “non-objective” research report commissioned by the company!

Sierra Leone Diamonds suffered a 19 per cent fall to finish at 42.5p, some 43 per cent down on its February 2005 IPO price of 75p, in spite of a generally positive update from the company. The root cause for the weakness would seem to be that the market has lost faith in chairman Frank Timis after a disastrous collapse in the price of his oil exploration company Regal Petroleum.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now on to our Frankfurt Correspondent who will be running the 1st Minesite Germany Forum this week.

FC. There is plenty of interest, but last week saw the lowest volume in the mining sector for this year on the German stock exchanges in Frankfurt and Berlin/Bremen. With the drop in the spot gold price below the important US$420/oz support it seems like all buyers are putting their heads in the sand. Some of the big volume movers over the last few weeks are now under real selling pressure and stock prices have been hit.

Minews . OK. I will have crossed my fingers for you. Now give us the names of the hard hit stocks over the last week on the German market

FC. Let’s start with the two heavily promoted companies, which are related to a well known German named Klaus Eckhof. He started a small European roadshow two weeks ago for his flagship company Moto Goldmines. There was some buying in the middle of the week after a presentation in a hotel near Frankfurt, but the sotck only gained 3.8 per cent on the week.. On the other hand his second “baby” the small Australian exploration company Tiger Resources halved from the all time high it reached only about three weeks ago. Let’s move to another story getting a positive Buy recommendation last week.

Minews. I’m surprised there are still some strong Buy recommandations in the German stock market magazines and investors are following them ?

FC. Well we could be close to a turning point as your Australian correspondent suggests.. Up to now only a few German investors have taken the contrarian view, but the US based gold explorer Bullion River Gold was one of the exceptions on the German market last week. After a very positive article in a widely distributed weekly stock market magazine the share price recovered with a rise of 15 per cent compared with its recent low.

Minews. Anything else for our readers from the German mining investment community ?

FC. To tell you the truth I checked quotes and volumes of about 40 companies I know are normally the real movers on the German market, but the volumes were near zero this week. Maybe our Forum will get things on the move again. Certainly investors will be interested in Olympus Pacific where Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe Mines has a big stake. I expect that you heard perhaps the name recently mainly for the planned IPO of its second largest stakeholder Zedex. on the AIM Market in the coming weeks.

Minews. Thanks FC. Best of luck next week.

http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=742

[Goldreport]

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Feature Story
Date: May 30, 2005

That Was The Week That Was … In London And Frankfurt.

The number of announcements and the level of activity among junior mining stocks in London was limited last week, but the tone was better. Maybe they took a lead from their seniors who appeared determined to kick sand at an analysts report from UBS which reduced the target prices for most of them. The broker cut its target on Rio Tinto shares by 9per cent, but perversely the shares rose by 20p to 1618p during the week. Similar cuts were made on the targets of BHP Billiton and Anglo American, but the former rose 25p to 663p and the latter 44p to 1324p. If that is broking it must be such fund.

Two other factors have tended to cloud the market for junior mining companies – RAB and Timis. It is probably actionable to mention them in the same breath so let’s make clear at the outset that RAB is realigning its portfolios and all its shareholdings are not necessarily overhangs. With Palladex, for instance, the news that most if its shareholding had been placed serial investor Paul Curtis. Curtis has a good record of backing smaller quoted companies and Palladex expect to announce the first drill results from its Aksur prospect in Kyrgyzstan soon. The shares rose from 7.75p to 9p.

Rather different reaction with European Goldfields and Sierra Leone Diamonds following a well documented dry hole at AIM listed Regal Petroleum following a fund raising. The dramatic reversal in share price put Frank Timis in the limelight and al the old stuff about heroin convictions in Perth was regurgitated. These have been known about since he first appeared in London with Gabriel Resources, but people tend to overlook such matters when shares are going up. Now there is a witch hunt for other companies in which he is involved. European Goldfields and Sierra Leone Diamonds are two companies which fit the bill, but he is much more involved with Sierra Leone Duiamonds so its shares were hit, whereas European Goldfields rose from 75p to 78.5p.

Reefton is a dual listed company which is having problems retaining credibility among investors. Following a request from the Australian Stock Exchange to clarify recent price movements and volumes, Reefton Mining gave an update on its current situation and said it knew of no reason for the spike in volume. The company said it was continuing to liaise with the Ministry of Mines and Energy in Namibia in respect to the applications for renewal of the exclusive prospecting licences covering the Erongo Polymetallic Project and the Skeleton Coast Diamond Project. This seems to have comforted some investors as the shares rose by 134= per cent to 3.25 p.

Also in positive mode was Magnesium International , another dual listed company. A week after presenting at Minesite Forums in London and Paris, and following an announcement that it had agreed a supply contract with the Egyptian Electricity Transmission Company for its magnesium smelter, the shares rose by 17p to 60.5p. Asia Energy also pleased the market with a further addition to its coal resources at the Phulbari project in Pakistan, bringing them up by a whopping 41 per cent to 522 million tonnes at JORC standards.

The market also reacted positively to announcements by Mano River that it had hit a kimberlite within four weeks of moving into Guinea; by Brazilian Diamonds that it had brought another diamond database from De Beers for its projects in Brazil; and Greystar Resources advanced 4 per cent to 194.5 on further drilling results from its Angostura project in Colombia.

On the downward track was African Eagle which has announced a couple of joint ventures in Zambia and Tanzania. The worry here seems to be the possible overhang from the RAB shareholding. Triple Plate Junction also fell a couple of pence despite a big intersection at its Crater Mountain project in PNG. And Centamin Egypt failed to enthuse investors now that it is back at work at its Sutari gold project in Egypt.

Now on to our Correspondent in Frankfurt Minews who attended a couple of presentations in Zurich last week. . The first one was Olympus Pacific, an emerging near-term gold producer in Vietnam which is an old friend of Minesite and second, Quincy Energy which recently changed its name from Quincy Gold to reflect uranium interests.

FC. First of all I have to tell you and our readers that next week there will be no Frankfurt update, because I will take a plane to Vietnam late Monday evening for a week’s visit. Vietnam should ring a bell, because you just mentioned it and yes I will go directly to the two main properties of Olympus Pacific to get a better understanding what’s going on there. It has been pretty hot in Germany recently so it is a good time to get away.

Surprisingly we saw some good volumes at the end of the week in some hand picked junior exploration stories.. Let’s start with a new Australian promotion on the German market. A company I personally never heard the name before emerged out of nothing last Friday. It’s Tennant Creek Gold. It looks like this tiny base and precious metal play, with a market cap of just around A$10 million hired a well known Austrian based PR/IR company to push the stock to higher levels. Interesting enough that the people behind the scene are the same related to Moto Goldmines, Tiger Resources and a few others. Nevertheless the volume of 1.3 million shares on Friday was really impressive the stock move up 9.5 per cent over the day, closing at 0.104 EURO. Maybe the last private placement of around 16 per cent of the issued capital to RAB Capital a month ago was a positive sign.

Secondly I should bring your attention to the volumes in Tournigan Gold, which may be related in some extent to their presentation on last Tuesday in Frankfurt, too. The shares saw a good daily volume of over 200,000 shares and a steady climb to close the week at 0,185 EURO a gain of nearly 20 per cent over the week. As I wrote here some times in the last few weeks the speculation of a new acquisition is the main driver of this positive action.

Minews. Presumably it is retail investors who are showing mosst interest in these stocks.

FC. Yes, you are absolutely all right. I believe these small junior exploration companies are bought mainly by retail investors, but for different reasons. I believe we have in Germany these typical speculators just jumping in on new recommendations and hoping to get a 10 to 20 per cent short term reward, but on the other hand you have these more fundamentally orientated wealthy retail and semi-professional investors who are looking for some real values in the ground. They buy these stocks for the long term and stay with the companies for the coming years if the management is delivering on their forecasts and promises.

The only uranium company generating good volume in Germany is Bell Coast, now renamed Uranium Power.. Despite a positive movement by some Canadian uranium plays in Canada in the last few days the shares were actually down a fraction to 0.32 EURO.

Minews. Thanks FC. We wish you a safe trip to Vietnam and hope to hear some interesting stories than from you in two weeks !

[Goldreport]

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Feature Story
Date: June 13, 2005

That Was The Week That Was ….. In London And Frankfurt.

Minews. Hope you are not going to report that London’s junior mining sector was as disappointing as Australia and Canada last week, London Correspondent.

LC. Not really. It was more of a sideways week in London, with more than a hint that the summer doldrums have arrived. Overall, the sector lost 0.76 percent in value, driven in the main by relatively small falls in prices of the larger companies, in particular Bema and Highland which both gave up 10 per cent in spite of the steady gold price and Western Canadian Coal and Asia Energy, which also lost 10 per cent.

There was one tiny newcomer on the AIM: Sunrise Diamonds, though this managed a most impressive debut by finishing the week 56 per cent up on its IPO price at 3.12p. However, even after this run the stock has a market capitalisation of only £2.4m and so is not of great significance. Sunrise hosts the diamond exploration assets in Scandinavia that were put together by its parent, Tertiary Minerals.

The coming week is bereft of new issues though the week after should see the arrival of Peninsular Gold which owns a portfolio of gold exploration properties in Malaysia including the old Raub Australian mine, close to Avocet’s Penjom operations. Significantly, given the state of the market in London, Peninsular is not intending to raise money at this point, though it is a fair assumption that it will be looking for funds when the market improves.

A minnow named Lisungwe was also expected on OFEX, but this seems to have been pulled as it no longer features on the OFEX website. Incidentally, the recent overhaul of the OFEX website puts it streets ahead of the truly awful LSE site – a major barrier to knowledge dissemination and a poor shop window for AIM.

Aside from Sunrise, the week’s best performance was a solid 24 per cent gain made by European Nickel to close at 34.5p. The move was driven by an announcement from the company that recovery of total contained nickel at its trial heap leach at Caldag in Turkey had passed the 50 per cent level, well ahead of target. BHP Billiton will now have to decide quickly whether to exercise its option to increase its hareholding and sign an offtake agreement as the option expires once recovery passes the 60 per cent level.

Alexander Mining also had a good week and closed up 21 per cent at 25.5p. There was no news – indeed the company has yet to grace the market with news of any sort which is strange as the chairman, Matt Sutcliffe, is an old broking hand and knows the value of newsflow. Maybe he is keeping his head down as he was an adviser to Regal Petroleum before setting off to make his fortune in South America. Incidentally, Martin Rosser has just joined Alexander Mining from VSA as manager, business development London. As all the company’s assets are elsewhere he should not be too This leaves VSA looking distinctly short-handed - ?is there anyone there at all? - but then the sector as a whole is chronically short of people with appropriate experience.

On the downside, the week’s worst performer was Glencar Mining which gave up more than 25 per cent of its value to close at 2.7p after it released its annual results. The driver for the move seems to have been an announcement that Glencar was planning a move to AIM with a 1 for 10 share consolidation. There are good practical reasons for such a consolidation, but they are never popular amongst the penny share punters that drive the price at these levels.

The second worst performance was made by another junior that seems to have been around for ever: Greenwich Resources. The stock lost some 18 per cent of its value to end the week at 2.3p following yet another delay in gaining permits for its long-stalled Sappes gold project in Greece. In keeping with a long-standing tradition on how to release bad news, the RNS went out as the market closed at 16.30hrs on the previous Friday. However, those pesky bulletin boards don’t stop for weekends and so the better informed shareholders were well prepared for Monday’s opening.

Minews. Thanks LC. Quite a lot of news, even if not too much action. Now over to Frankfurt where Our Man should have returned from sunny Vietnam.

FC. Thanks. I cam e back to the bad news that a resource orientated conference which was to take place at the beginning of July in Frankfurt, with people like Jim Rogers and most of the well known German resource analysts, was cancelled at the beginning of last week. It seems like most of the German investors are not willing to pay over Euro 1,500 for a two day event.

Minews. I can’t say I blame them. It is a lot of money. They can buy Jim Rogers’ latest book ‘Hot Commodities’ for 10 Euro and they probably want to see actual companies rather than analysts. Wonder who these organisers were who could not see that it is the companies who need investors, not the other way round. Anyway, what happened in Frankfurt last week?

FC. Let’s start with the highlight of this week which was without any doubt the share price of Tournigan Gold. On Wednesday morning the news of the acquisition of three uranium and moly licences in the eastern part of Slovakia hit the wires and there was some big volume to be seen on the German market. The shares closed at Euro 0.29 on Friday, which sums up to a weekly gain of Euro 0.09 or 45 per cent.

Minews. Nice for some. Now what about Silverado Gold Mines which seems to have a good following in Germany?

FC. Yes, you are right, but for the most of the long term shareholders it is a very sad story with a big loss on the table, but it could be in for a recovery. This Canadian company produced some smaller amounts of placer gold in Alaska some years ago, but then basically ran out of money. Now it has changed the main focus to the development of a green fuel technology. At the same time it has adjusted its gold resources and the led to a 59.4 per cent increase in the share price.

Minews. The question investors should be asking is whether this company is worth the effort to revive it again, but time will tell. Anything else going on?

FC. Last but not least a uranium story which got a buy recommendation in the last weeks in Germany. It’s the US listed company U.S. Energy which is listed in Frankfurt since the beginning of April. The company owns one of only a few existing uranium milling facilities in the US and should benefit from the growing interest for more nuclear power in the US and elsewhere in the world. The shares got a boost on Monday last week after some newsletters in the US pointed to that important fact and the retail investors bought some shares. In the end, however, there was not much overall movement in the share price on the week.

Minenews. Thanks FC. Have a good trip to Grand Junction in the US, where you will attend the Uranium Expo 2005 and we expect your update directly from Colorado next week.

[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: June 20, 2005

That Was The Week That Was … In London And Frankfurt

Minews. There is a smile on your face, London Correspondent, which is surely not totally based on the problems in which the Aussie cricket team finds itself.

LC. I won’t be smiling about the Aussies until the Test series is over, but summer has finally arrived in London and in order to celebrate the junior mining sector has enjoyed its best week since March, adding 5.3 per cent to its value on the back of a strong rally in commodity prices.

Gains were spread right across the board with no single standout story, though
it was clear from volumes that the institutional buyers have returned. The primary market has also reopened and quite a few companies are conducting roadshows with a view to impacting just before everyone goes on holiday. However, the move seems to have caught many participants by surprise: there were no new arrivals last week and only two are due this week. First up will be Peninsular Gold which should join the AIM on Thursday, followed by Lisungwe which intends to join OFEX on Friday. However, at least six have already declared for the week after.

The week’s best performance, by far, was the 46 per cent gain made by Anglesey Mining. The stock ended the week at 10.25p, a price which it last saw back in 1997 towards the end of the last mining and exploration boom. Whilst there has been no official announcement, the start of drilling at the Parys Mountain project in North Wales was widely covered in the media. Let’s hope that this campaign is more successful than the last one, which petered out in 1998 with no significant new
discoveries.

Next up was Oriel Resources, which added 33 per cent to its value to close at 32.5p. An update was issued which summarised progress at Shevchenko nickel and Voskhod chrome projects in Kazakhstan. Mintek has just delivered a positive report on the test smelting work done on the Shevchenko ferronickel ores. This was a critical component of the ongoing feasibility study which is due to be completed in September this year.

The recently reorganised Cambridge Mineral Resources also had its best week for several months with a 31 per cent move to finish at 8.5p after it announced that it had made a new gold discovery at Polski Gradets in Bulgaria. Interestingly, Robert Friedland’s Ivanhoe is paying for the work as part of its earn-in commitment.

African Platinum, which until recently was a Phil Edmonds company named Southern African Resources, moved strongly ahead to close up 26 per cent at 24p after announcing that it had completed a positive pre-feasibility study on its Leeuwkop platinum project in South Africa. Work now starts on the full feasibility study which is scheduled to be completed some time in the first half of 2006. Interestingly, the positive move was made in spite of concerted selling by major shareholder Fidelity which reduced its interest from 7.7 per cent to 5.7 per cent over the course of
the week. Back in March, Fidelity owned more than 10 per cent of the company.

Minews. That is a share we might keep an eye on now that Phil Edmonds has gone. Roy Pitchford , who is now chief executive, did a great job at Zimplats and presented at our 10th Minesite Mining Forum shortly before the bid from Impala Platinum

LC. Good omen. Table Mountain and Angus and Ross also made significant gains, up 31 per cent and 25 per cent respectively, but as neither has recently updated the market it is not immediately obvious what lies behind the moves.

Losers were few and far between with most of the larger moves being suffered by shells and near shells such as Central African Gold and Zareba, both of which were down by nearly 20 per cent. Astonishingly, Central African has not issued an announcement since September last year, at which point it was apparently about to start exploring for gold in Botswana. In its defence though, its Chairman Phil Edmonds has been rather busy in Sudan of late.

Apart from that, Glencar dropped a further 17 per cent to 2.25p following the previous week’s announcement about its plan to consolidate the stock and Sunrise Diamonds fell by 16 per cent to 2.6p on profit taking after its strong debut the previous week.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now to our Frankfurt correspondent who gives us his update directly from Grand Junction in Colorado where he is attending the Uranium Expo 2005.

FC. It seems to have attracted plenty of interest and the list of attending companies includes Titan Uranium, Energy Metals Corp, Dejour Enterprises, Firestone Resources, Quincy Energy and some more. Up to now around 140 people registered but number still seem to be increasing as a result of publicity.

Minews. Sounds interesting. Let`s move over to the activity on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. Any new stories for the German investors in the resource sector ?

FC. Yes, we had a new Canadian junior gold story hitting the traders desks last week. The relatively unknown company YGC Resources made an impressive 50 per cent jump over the last week on the Frankfurt market. The company was mainly promoted on the fact that itstarted a drilling programme on its gold property in the Yukon Territory with an historical gold resource of over 1.2 million ounces of gold.

Minews. Was the buying a short term punt by retail investors, or are there longer term implications.

FC Time will tell. I also want to mention Tournigan Gold which I have followed for a long time. Now the company seems to change it short-term focus from the European gold exploration to the uranium market, with a new acquisition announced in the middle of this week. The investors got a real roller-coater ride this week as the stock fell on Wednesday and recovered a little bit to close at Euro 0.26 on Friday, which sums up to a loss 13 per cent over the week.

Minenews. Thanks FC. Have a good flight back to Germany and perhaps give us some more rumours and facts about uranium conference next week.

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[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: June 27, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London and Frankfurt

Minews. Good morning, London Correspondent. A slightly ambivalent expression on your face, which could mean anything..

LC. London’s miners had been enjoying a good week, underpinned by a strong gold price and the impending elimination of the LME’s copper stocks. However, Highland Gold picked Friday lunchtime to spoil the party by releasing a severe profits warning. The stock promptly fell almost 20 per cent, wiping £62million off its market capitalisation. This was enough to cancel out the rest of the sector’s gains and overall it ended the week down 0.3 per cent.

In essence, Highland has been struggling to produce gold at its MNV mine and at its startup at Darasun and so production for the year will be well below target. For some reason, the company did not give the actual size of the shortfall, which left the market wondering just how bad the situation is. House broker Cazenove will have its work cut out on Monday if it wants to contain the situation.

Minews. Hope Cazenove is not picking up any bad habits from its new US partners.

LC Quite so. That aside, the mood is generally positive and the door for new issues is now open again. Peninsular Gold joined the AIM on Thursday, followed by Lisungwe (exploration in Malawi) which arrived on OFEX on Friday.

Minews Heard not a word from Peninsular Gold. Wonder if it has something to hide, or simply does not want to pay a PR company.

LC. No idea. The week to come should see no less than seven new arrivals on AIM, including Caledonia Mining which is actually all about gold mining in South Africa’s greenstone belts, Persian Gold which is John Teeling’s latest adventure - this time focussed on Iran, Shanta Gold which is looking for it in Tanzania, Thor Mining and Red Rock Resources which are both suspiciously shell-like offshoots of Regency Mines and lastly Latitude Resources which is moving up from OFEX and Ovoca which is adding an AIM quote to its Irish listing. Two more have already declared for the first week in July and doubtless a few more will try before the summer
break really gets under way.

By a short head the weeks largest gainer was Colin Orr-Ewing’s River Diamonds, which managed a 28.6 per cent rise to 2.25p after announcing that it had agreed to earn in to a 51 per cent interest in the Panguma diamond project in Sierra Leone. This deal will add some diversity to River which has hitherto been focussed on mining alluvial diamonds in Brazil.

An exploration update from Palladex provided some relief to its long-suffering shareholders; the stock put on nearly 26 per cent to finish at 12.25p. To be absolutely fair there was little in the news release, other than the fact that three holes had been completed with results due back in a few days. In addition, two new drill rigs have been ordered from Russia as the current Chinese-made equipment is not able to maintain the drilling rates needed to stay with the programme. It is not immediately obvious why Palladex chose to issue the update now rather than wait for the assay results, but doubtless there was a good reason.

Minews. Simply had to say something, I guess. Maybe Merlin Marr -Johnson is positioning himself to present to the Association of Mining Geriatrica, of which he is a fan..

LC. Several other stocks also had a good week, including Ovoca which added 27 per cent on no news other than its impending arrival on AIM and Caledon which gained 17 percent on no news whatsoever.

On the downside, the week’s major story was undoubtedly the problems at Highland, with most of the other significant falls being simply profit taking after the previous week’s strong run. In particular, Anglesey gave up nearly 15 per cent, Angus and Ross dropped 12 per cent and Cambridge lost 18 per cent, though all three are still well above the levels of two weeks ago.

Minews. Now we turn over to our German correspondent who is back from Uranium Expo 2005 and brings us some new facts about the uranium market ?

FC. Yes fortunately I could tell our readers some real interesting facts and rumours I picked up there. Let’s start with facts and one very important aspect I was told is that the US Bureau for Land Management made the decision to issue new licences for uranium exploration ground in Colorado and other US states which is, in my opinion, a very positive sign for the growing demand and need for more uranium production in the coming years.

Now turn to the few rumours I heard there. Two companies which are still not listed took my attention. The first one was Concentric Energy which owns a large uranium and vanadium deposit in the US and the other one UR-Energy should be one of the next candidates to get a listing on the Canadian market.

Minews. What else is known about that UR-Energy ?

FC. If you check out the website you will see that they raised over C$ 6 million in the last 6 months, which shows a strong support for the management team. Nothing else has been announced, but Robin Dow, the CEO, is a shrewd operator

Minews. OK. Let’s move again to the main activities on the German market last week. Any newcomers there and what stocks did the retail investors chase last week ?

FC. Sorry no new listings last week in Germany, though there was a certain amount of activity in Dragon Gold which is listed in Canada.. Perhaps you know more about that exploration company with some exploration ground in China and Mongolia with a market of US$11 million.

Other active companies included the Australian junior Tiger Resources, which headed north after an option exercise date came to an end and the selling pressure of the last few weeks suddenly stopped. Tournigan Gold was on the move, again.. Last but not least I want to mention the Canadian junior Cardero Resources, which saw some good volumes on the Frankfurt market at the end of last week, after a positive announcement on its iron sand project in Peru

Minews. Thank you for that update, looks like some good volumes on the German market last week ahead of the summer holidays which started in Germany last week …….. Already??????.

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[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: July 04, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …… In London and Frankfurt

Minews. A bit of a glum look on your face, London Correspondent, was it the rugby?

LC. Partly, but it was also a disappointing week for London’s junior mining sector where the recovery of a fortnight ago looks like it has already run out of steam. Overall, the sector fell by just over two percent with winners substantially outnumbered by losers by the close of play.

There was a positive barrage of news as many companies raced to get results on the screen by the end of the month, though much of it was distinctly uninspiring. For instance, Celtic Resources finally gave some substance to the deal that it is trying to put together in Russia between itself, IG Alrosa and Barrick. The deal should give Celtic control of more than 20 million ounces of gold in resource. However, after more than two years of negotiation it has still not been closed and so the market is understandably still wary. The reaction to the announcement underlines this cautiousness: the stock gained a mere 0.9 percent over the week to close at 390p.

Another indication of the current state of the market is that only four of the expected newcomers on AIM actually arrived: the three others all announced delays. In the case of Shanta Gold the issue has only been put back by a week whereas Latitude’s move from OFEX and Red Rock’s IPO have all been delayed until the end of July. Of the four that actually made it, Caledonia Mining and Orchid Capital did not raise any money and Persian Gold had a muted (for a Teeling IPO) debut and closed the week up only 4 percent at 26p. On the other hand, Thor Mining managed a spectacular 94 per cent gain from its IPO at 2p to close the week just shy of 4p. It is not immediately obvious what Thor actually did to justify such a move, but as it only raised around £1.4 million it may just be a case of more buyers than sellers in a tight market.

The week’s best performance goes to Central African Gold, run by the ubiquitous Phil Edmonds. The stock gained 25 percent to close at 3.75p after it released its final results which included some considerable detail about its exploration programme in Botswana. In essence, the company has a programme in place to explore a large greenstone belt that is considered prospective for gold and base metals. Some targets have been drilled, though as yet no assay results have been received.

Another highflyer was Hambledon Mining which put on 20 percent to finish at 9p after it announced that its ongoing work in Kazakhstan has enabled it to increase the size of its gold resource from 2.8 million ounces to 3.5 million, though on reading the detail it seems that only 1.4 million has been classified using the standard JORC system and the rest is P1 category material that the likes of Celtic do not even include as a resource. In addition, the resource figures include silver as a gold equivalent. It’s a good thing that investors understand these things, as otherwise people might start to get confused…

Cluff Gold had a good run to end the week up 16 per cent at 49.5p after it announced that it had commenced the development of the Kalsaka gold project in Burkina Faso, and hopes to have it in production by October 2006. Oddly enough, the statement then went on to tell us that discussions on the financing of the project are just about to start. Standard industry practice would be to arrange the financing and then start mine construction but no doubt Algy has a cunning plan.

Hidefield Gold was also one of the winners with a 14 per cent run to 6p after it announced a deal to acquire a substantial package of gold exploration assets in Argentina from Yamana Gold. Argentina is a country with which CEO John Prochnau is very familiar – a few years ago when he was involved with Brancote he identified the Esquel gold project in Argentina that went on to make a very substantial amount of money for the shareholders when the company was sold. Yamana of course is fully committed to a major development programme in Brazil and so it makes sense for Hidefield to take the assets forward.

In the absence of positive news, the market was inclined to mark most companies down, though a few did manage to stand out. The worst performance was Medoro which managed to lose 25 per cent to end the week at 3p after no news whatsoever. This is a new low point for the company, which seems to have totally lost its support in London. This is a far cry from the glory days of Gold Mines of Sardinia back in the late 1990s.

Minews. It is a real disgrace, Medoro. Time the AIM authorities reminded management that they have a responsibility to shareholders. Make a note to write about it next week. Now over to our German correspondent to see what happened in his market last week.

FC. The fall in the price of gold on Friday was a bit of a surprise. A lof of attention in Frankfurt, however, was on the US OTC listed company Sterling Group, which has nothing in common with the better known Sterling Mining from Idaho, which owns the famous Sunshine silver mine.. The company is proceeding to develop the Jiajika lithium project, which could be the largest lithium mineral deposit in China. As a second project the company wants to acquire 52 % of a copper and silver project in Inner-Mongolia, which will allow the Company to diversify its interests in China. There was plenty of trading in the stock, but it did not move on the week.

Minews. A interesting story. Never heard of the company before. Anything in the uranium sector, which seems like your personal favourite sector for this year ?

FC. Yes I have to admit that I think the fundamentals for the uranium market are outstanding. Uranium Power is the uranium junior with the greatest following by retail investors on the German market. Last week we traded on most of the days more shares in Frankfurt, but even so there was a marginal fall in the share price.

Minews.. Any other excitements on the German market last week ?

FC. Yes, we had some good gains in two junior exploration companies which I have mentioned before. First of all the Australian junior Tennant Creek Gold which jumped around 25 per cent last week on the German market to close at Euros 0.147 on Friday, with a lot of rumours about some positive news in the coming days. Another surprising mover was the Canadian gold and silver exploration junior Exeter Resource, which started the week at Euro 0.65 and saw an impressive run-up up to Euro 0.81 on Thursday after an announcement was made. Exeter Resource has commenced an intensive programme using three drill rigs to expand current gold resources at its La Cabeza gold project in Argentina. Traders, however, realised that they would have to wait some weeks for more news and the shares fell back to Euros 0.72 om Friday

Minews. Ok. Thanks for these updates from Germany where the activity seems to be picking up again. We will look forward to your comment next week. and wish you a good time next week !

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[Goldreport]

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Feature Story
Date: July 11, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt

Minews. So glad you were away, London Correspondent, when the bombs went off. Tended to dislocate trading a bit towards the end of the week.

LC. Yes. In London, the week was of course dominated by Thursday’s terrible events. The market responded in typical fashion with a quick sell-off followed by a rapid recovery and by the close on Friday, the junior mining sector had actually managed to gain just over one per cent. The gain was largely driven by First Quantum, which put on 12 per cent to close at 1115p and in doing so added more than £70million to its value.

There does not seem to be any specific reason for the move, other than the continuing strength of the copper market, supported by strikes at Zaldivar mine in Chile and at some of Grupo Mexico’s operations in the USA.

The underlying mood was less positive, with little enthusiasm for new issues. None of the planned new arrivals actually showed up, although it would seem that Shanta Gold has at least raised enough money to satisfy its minimum requirements – it is now expected to join the AIM on Monday after raising £4.3million of its original £5million target. Toronto-listed AfriOre will also join AIM on Monday, though it is not raising any money at this point.

Minews. Pity these dual listings don’t seem to find is necessary to carry out any promotion. What is the point of listing?

LC. Good point. Sanatana Diamonds, which is a new venture intending to explore for diamonds in Canada and featuring the interesting combination of Richard Prickett and Glenn Laing, has apparently postponed its arrival indefinitely. Richard Prickett was of course well known as chairman of Brancote and more recently for his presence at Landore, whereas Glenn Laing had a lively time in South Africa in the 1980s before moving on to Canada.

Minews. Maybe investors have been keeping an eye on St Andrews Goldfields where Glenn Laing is CEO. The share price has been a bit of a disaster over the past 6 months and little news appears over here.

LC. On the market, the best performer by far was Braemore Resources, which more than doubled to end the week at 12.5p after its stock was re-quoted after a period of suspension pending publication of the details of its deal to acquire a nickel tailings retreatment project in Australia. For those lucky enough to have acquired stock at the IPO back in March, the current price represents a more than 12x gain on their investment, which probably explains why some of the senior management, including CEO Jeremy Edelman, are moving on.

MInews. Bit sinister for the CEO to depart at that point. We will keep an eye on it.

LC.Most of the other large gains were also at the scrappy end of the market, with South China up 36 per cent to 7.5p on no news last week and Medoro up 50 per cent to 4.5p, reversing the previous week’s drop though again with no news to support the move.

That was about it in terms of significant gains, though there were quite a few companies that ended the week down. The worst offender in terms of percentage fall was Pan African Resources, a Colin Bird company about which little has been heard since it reversed into a shell named White Knight towards the end of last year. The stock ended the week down 31 percent at a new low of 1.38p though there was no news to report.

Similarly, Tertiary Minerals fell 23 per cent to 5p, GMA Resources gave up 16 per cent to end at 9p and European Diamonds lost 14 per cent to close at 37.5p, all with no new news and no obvious reason behind the moves.

Minews. Bad luck on Tertiary and European Diamonds, but GMA Resources simply does not bother to keep investors up to date. Now on to Frankfurt where German investors seem to have gone wild over an oil/ gas story driving the price up 230 per cent over the past two weeks. Tell us about it Frankfurt Correspondent.

FC. I know it is not a mining story, but the action in Canadian listed Energulf Resources is a good example how a good story with some good promotion can work out on the German stock exchange.. The stock started trading on the Frankfurt market only three months ago and is now the number one stock in all German based chat rooms.. The main reason for the steady climb is that the German market maker seems to get in trouble covering short positions opened before Canada starts trading It’s a tough game especially if you get more and more buy orders on the German market and your trading book is getting deeper and deeper under water

This story brings is to Moto Goldmines which published a new releases with some very good drilling results from their Karagba prospect in the Democratic Republic of the Congo last week. Readers should know that it is promoted by the same people on the German market as Energulf. Last week Moto rose by nearly 35 per cent at Euros 0.35 .

Minews.. Any other stories with a good volume and activity on the german market ?

FC. Yes, the merger between Aflease Uranium & Gold and Southern Cross Resources brought up the volume in the stock on Tuesday, as investors liked the idea to create a new multinational company with uranium assets in South Africa, Canada and Australia and might be sooner or later in other places in the world. The main listing will move to Canada, but the secondary listing in South Africa will still exist for the majority of shareholders from the UK, Switzerland and elsewhere in Europe.

Minews. Our Canadian Correspondent also mentioned it ands we will be publishing a full article on it this week. Anything else?

FC. Yes, another junior exploration company with a good following over the recent weeks is Panoro Resources, which is focused on exploring for large-potential gold and gold/copper deposits in Peru and in the Phillippines at the moment. After some positive newsletter comments the stock increased a cent to Euros 0.14.

Minews. Thanks FC Talk to you next week.

[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: July 18, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London and frankfurt

That Was The Week That Was …. In London and Frankfurt

Minews. The spirit of summer is on us I feel, London Correspondent, and the Ashes tests will take attention away from the market next week.

LC.It was a relatively quiet week in London with life returning to the normal routine after the previous week’s disruption. The mining sector added a modest 0.8 per cent to its overall value, which took it back above the £7 billion mark for the first time in several months.

The market welcomed two newcomers to the AIM on Monday: Shanta Gold and AfriOre. Shanta Gold raised around £3.4m to explore for gold in Tanzania, though it was clearly a struggle as completion of the issue was twice postponed. By the end of the week the stock had managed to add around eight per cent to close at 27.5p, which under the circumstances is a very positive result. AfriOre did not raise any money and so its arrival was barely noticed – by the end of the week it had traded just 360 shares on AIM.

Minews. Looks like a rather pointless exercise. We heard not a word from the company.

LC. The week to come may see one new arrival, a Chris Kyriakou venture named Uranium Mining Corporation, though as yet the broker has not released any detail to the market so it would be no surprise if this was delayed. In addition, Latitude Resources (formerly known as Latin American Copper) is due to move up from OFEX to AIM.

The week’s major announcement was the proposed deal whereby Oxus will acquire essentially all of Eurogold’s mining assets. This looks like a good piece of business for both parties: it would give Oxus considerable diversification and take the focus away from the political problems at its Jerooy operation in Kyrgyzstan, whereas for Eurogold shareholders it gives the opportunity to take advantage of the skills of the Oxus team to fast track the Saulyak project in Ukraine. However, the market took the announcement somewhat negatively; Eurogold lost 14 per cent to end at 6p and Oxus gave up 2 per cent to close at 45.5p.

On the whole, the market was quiet with few positive moves of any consequence. Aside from the usual speculative gyrations of shell companies the best performer was South China Resources which added 33 per cent to its value to end at 10p after it announced that it had started drilling at its Danfeng copper molybdenum project in China. The stock is now trading at exactly twice its April 2005 IPO price of 5p, which is an admirable result given the generally weak sentiment during the period.

European Nickel also had a good week; it closed at 38.5p up 22 per cent after it announced that the resource at its Caldag project in Turkey was around 35 per cent larger than had previously been thought.

On the downside, there were major announcements by Thistle Mining and Cambridge Mineral Resources. Trading in Thistle was restarted after a period of suspension while the company was restructured. In essence, the debt overhang has been exchanged for stock, though in the process the existing shareholders were virtually wiped out. The stock fell by an effective 89 per cent taking into account the 1 for 200 consolidation, though as a result of the new stock being issued the market capitalisation actually doubled. All of which left the market thoroughly confused and so the market makers opened the spread right up. Indeed, for all of Friday at least Evolution was offering to
buy stock at 1p and sell it at 100p. The stock remains suspended in Canada.

The Cambridge announcement was much more straightforward. The results of the pre-feasibility study for the company’s Lomero Poyatos copper-gold project in Spain indicated that it was not economically viable and so it was immediately ceasing work at the site. This was a brave decision as many other companies when faced with a similar result may have persisted. However, Colin Andrew knows very well what happens to companies that try to run uneconomic mines as at one point he was involved with Navan’s mines in Spain, though the blame for what happened there lies elsewhere as he had left long before that company collapsed. The market took the announcement on the chin and marked the stock down by 36 per cent to end the week at 4.5p. Cambridge is now refocusing on developing a gold mine in Peru and its exploration joint venture with Ivanhoe in Bulgaria and Serbia.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now over to Germany to see how the markets was affected by gold falling below US$420/oz. Are some of the retail investors getting nervous, Frankfurt Correspondent.?

FC. No. Surprisingly it’s just the opposite. I never had so many positive stories to comment on than this week. Most of these companies are small and don’t exceed market caps of Euros 30 million, , but it seems like the German retail investors like to chase junior resources stocks at the moment.

The biggest gainer for this week on the Frankfurt stock exchange was the relatively unknown canadian explorer Amera Resources, which is part of the Vancouver based Grosso group of companies. The flagship company of this group is IMA Exploration with their huge silver discovery in Argentina. Amera has the same management and explores for gold and copper in Peru. It just doubled last week on the Frankfurt market to close the week at Euros 0.56 .

The next company I have to bring to your attention is the Canadian junior Knight Resources which also doubled in the first three days of last week, but fell back a bit later on.consolidated a bit down afterwards. Drilling has started at its West Raglan project where the operator is Anglo American Exploration.

Minews. Any more excitement?

FC. Yes, let’s move on to an Australian gold and zinc development company I mentioned here before. This time I don’t want to bring your attention only to Tennant Creek but to one of its investments, Batavia Mining. This company has a long history of promotion as Menzies Gold. After a trading halt at the beginning of last week, investors became excited when an uranium acquisition in the Northern Territory in Australia was announced. The shares jumped around 50 per cent on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange but closed the week for a net increase of over 20 per cent.

Last but not least a well known name for some of our readers is North American Gold, a company exploring for metals in Scandinavia. After a recommendation by some newsletters we saw 25 per cent gain on the week to Euro 0.55.Altogether it was one of the best weeks on Frankfurt that I can remember for some time

Minews. OK.. Thanks FC. Lets hope you have a similar story next week.

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[Goldreport]

Feature Story
Date: July 25, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …. In London And Frankfurt

Minews. Good morning London Correspondent. There seem to be a number of things going on in London at the moment which are taking investors’ eyes away from the screens

LC. Exactly. On most of London’s trading floors the TV screens were tuned away from the normal business TV channels with interest switching from terrorism to cricket and back, depending on where the action was. As a consequence, there was not much actual buying and selling going on, though the junior mining sector continued its recent recovery with a 1.5 per cent gain, driven principally by a strong showing at First Quantum which gained just over 8 per cent as expectations rose that copper prices may spike higher.

Rio Tinto issued its production report for the second quarter, which showed that its Australian iron ore mines are continuing to run at record levels and that demand in general continues to be strong. Elsewhere, the drawdown of what is left of the world’s copper stockpiles continued and commentators are starting to wonder what will happen when there simply is no more metal available. The net result was that brokers have been upgrading their earnings forecasts and target prices and the larger miners are now mostly trading at or very close to record levels.

Neither of the two expected newcomers actually made it onto the market. Latitude has put back its arrival on AIM for a week though Uranium Mining Corporation seems to have disappeared without trace. However, the week to come should see no less than six new arrivals: Latitude, International Molybdenum, Sanatana Diamonds, Ariana Resources, Red Rock Resources and Anglo Asian Mining. Assuming they all make it, this should just about clear out the pipeline of new issues before the summer break.

On the market, the largest rise was the 156 per cent gain made by Thistle Mining to close at 50p. It will be remembered that in the previous week, the stock had fallen by some 89 percent after its financial reconstruction and 1 for 200 consolidation became effective. The company issued an update regarding its plans to restore the President Steyn gold mine to cash profitability by early 2006. Inevitably, this will result in substantial job losses, though as the company has only just managed to avoid complete collapse this should be seen as the lesser evil. The bottom line is that government fiscal policies in South Africa are ultimately responsible, though of course everyone is far too polite to actually say this.

Frontier Mining had a good week, with a 25 per cent run up to close at 25p. There has been no recent news, so maybe the market thinks that an update is due on progress at the gold properties in Kazakhstan.

Next up were two coal stocks associated with Cambrain Mining, Coal International and Western Canadian Coal. Coal International rose by 23 percent to 95.5p after it announced that it is in the process of taking full control of two companies with coal assets in West Virginia, USA. At the same time, the company has switched broker from Williams de Broe to broking newcomer Cenkos, following the newly recruited ex Williams de Broe mining team of Joe Nally and Chris Brown. Western Canadian Coal put on 19 per cent to end the week at 219.5p, though in this case there was no news to explain the move. Coincidentally, it is also currently a Williams de Broe company.

On the downside there were some substantial falls, though most of the larger moves were at the, shall we say, less substantial end of the market. Worst performer was Capricorn Resources, which fell by 48 per cent to 1.875p after founders Phil Edmonds and Andrew Groves sold 8 million shares to Brian Moritz for only 0.25p per share. Very generous of them. On paper at least, this gives Mr Moritz an immediate gain of nearly eight times – in money terms his £20,000 investment is now worth £150,000. By an interesting coincidence, Capricorn’s NOMAD is Grant Thornton, which until recently employed Mr Moritz.

The second worst was the 31 per cent fall to 2.25p by ASX and AIM listed Reefton Mining, after the Namibian authorities refused to issue it with the rights to explore for nuclear fuels at its Erongo prospect. Fortunately for the company, it managed to complete an A$240,000 placing a few days before the announcement though the placee, Shore Capital, is probably less than happy with the course of events.

Minews. Thanks LC. Let’s hope there is better news on every front next week. The Chinese currency move looks reasonably constructive. Now over to Frankfurt to see how the German market reacted to the news from China.

FC. Over here investors are trading speculative stocks in the mining sector more often than before. This week I will start with the biggest loser which was one the biggest gainers last week. Amera Resources got a big hit after it opened at Euros 0.71 on Monday and closed the week at Euro 0.45, which means some speculators lost over one third of their investment in just five trading days. The real downtrend began on Tuesday as the company announced a new private placement at C$0.70 and investors feared that more free trading stock would hit the market.

Now let’s move to movers on the upside. At the most speculative end was OTC listed company Great West Gold, which is only listed on the smaller German Berlin-Bremen. This stock doubled last week with volumes of a few hundred million shares traded in Germany every day. It was all down to the lunatics on the chatboards who tend to do no research. I looked at the last official SEC filing and found out that this company has the unbelievable number of 10.3 billion (!) shares outstanding and has zero cash in the bank and liabilities of around US$900.000. Some very stupid investors didn’t understand they are buying a worthless shell company with no real assets despite some gold mining claims in Arizona and a market capitalisation still above US$14 million. Hopefully this stock will be delisted from the German exchange sooner rather than later.

Minews. I always had an idea that German investors were quite sensible. Clearly I am wrong. Anything else going on?

FC. Yes, there is a new uranium story called Forsys Metals from Canada. A shell company for some time which now has different resource properties in Canada and Namibia. This was just one of the ten new listings of exploration companies from Canada and Australia on the Berlin-Bremen Stock Exchange last week. Some of the companies are well known like Lumina Resources, Northern Peru Copper or Cross Lake Minerals, but no one seems to query why they list here. At least we had some good volume on Friday in the only widely followed uranium stock Uranium Power which climbed from Euros 0.31 to Euros 0.34 on quite high volume.

Minews. Not exactly riveting stuff is it? Hope we get some better news about higher quality companies next week.

http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=2891

[Goldreport]

http://www.minesite.com/storyFull.php?storySeq=2903


Feature Story
Date: August 01, 2005

That Was The Week That Was …… In London And Frankfurt.

That Was The Week That Was …… In London And Frankfurt.

In many respects it was a dull week in London, with most of what little interest there was focussing on the plethora of new issues. Overall, the sector lost 0.25 per cent with slightly more than half of London’s 167 junior miners, explorers, mining finance houses and shells closing down on the week. The virtual absence of institutional buying was also reflected by the fact that, in spite of strong commodity prices, First Quantum, Bema, Oxus, Highland and Yamana all lost ground.

The main story was that no less than six companies joined the AIM and one joined OFEX, though the net gain was only six as one of the newcomers to AIM was Latitude Resources upgrading from OFEX. The largest of these new arrivals was Anglo Asian Mining which has some gold assets in Azerbaijan. Numis did the business with a £20 million fundraising and managed to sustain interest in the all-important after market – the stock ended the week at 87.5p, almost 14 per cent better than the IPO price.

In terms of size the next largest is International Molybdenum, which was split out of Galahad Gold. As the name suggests, International Moly is studying the Malmbjerg molybdenum deposit in Greenland. One point of interest was that International Moly is the first mining stock to sign up with Arbuthnot as broker. Arbuthnot has not previously followed the sector but has recently hired analyst John McGloin from Evolution and so presumably is planning to have a serious presence. International Moly enjoyed a good start on the AIM; by the close it had gained 23 per cent in what is presumably a tight market as some 82 per cent of the stock is still held by Galahad.

Next up was Sanatana Diamonds which is looking for shiny stones in Canada. The stock had a successful debut and by the end of the week had gained nearly 7 per cent to close at 87.5p. Latitude Resources also enjoyed the move from OFEX to AIM; it managed a 7.5 per cent gain on the price at which it did its fundraising.

The set of newcomers was rounded out by some minnows: Red Rock Resources is exploring for iron ore in Australia, Ariana Resources is a new venture set up by Steven Poulton (ex Mano River) to explore for gold in Turkey and lastly something named Yellowcake has joined OFEX. As the name suggests, Yellowcake is involved in uranium and its modus operandi is to invest in listed explorers. As a result it is classified on OFEX under “Speciality and other Finance”.

New issues aside, it was a dull week on the market with many institutional players away on holiday. This is well illustrated by the fact that the highest climber was Zareba, a Brian Moritz shell which has some interests in diamonds in Namibia. The stock was driven up by some 80 per cent by bulletin board punters to close at 1.125p in spite of the absence of any news.

Next up was Tertiary Minerals, which gained 30 per cent to finish at 6.5p after releasing its latest quarterly update. It is not immediately obvious from the report what drove the price as progress at the various projects seems to be steady, but it may have something to do with the success of Sunrise Diamonds which recently split from its parent. New Millenium also had a good week and closed up 26 percent at 4.25p though there was no news to support the move.

On the downside the action was similarly confined to the smaller and scrappier end of the market. The worst performer was Central African Gold, which fell by almost 27 per cent to 2.75p. Inevitably, there was no obvious reason for the move, other than possibly some fear that Phil Edmonds may be planning to exit the company at a large discount to the quote in the same way that he did from sister shell Capricorn a couple of weeks ago.

Vietnamese explorer Triple Plate Junction had a rough week; by the close it had lost almost a quarter of its value to end at 19.5p. Inevitably, there was no obvious reason for the move as it is several weeks since the company last updated the market.

Investors continued to pile out of Reefton; the stock closed down by 22 per cent at 1.75p following the release of its latest quarterly. It will be remembered that the previous week it had announced that it had failed to be granted some uranium prospecting rights in Namibia. The “highlight” of the quarterly would seem to be the fact that it has now gained the right to prospect for industrial minerals on some of its diamond exploration licences. Indeed, the fact that the report went on about the potential for industrial minerals at some length might suggest a lack of confidence in the likelihood of payable diamonds being found, though with the diamond recovery plant now in storage there is not much chance of actually finding out in the near future.

Minews. Thanks LC. Now let’s go to our Frankfurt correspondent to ask how investors reacted to the prices of gold and copper

FC. Before going into that I would like to make a couple of points to clarify the situation in Frankfurt. First, the Frankfurt Stock Exchange accounts for 90 per cent of the whole trading volume in Germany. Second, the reality is that we have no real institutional investors who buy or sell their stocks on the German market. You have between five to ten German based resource funds, but they couldn`t invest in any gold or mining stock with a market cap below Euros 50 million, and if they buy stakes in smaller companies they subscribe for private placements or buy them on the main markets in Canada or Australia or the UK. Third, German retail investors are mostly following heavily promoted stocks that are on the move anyway in the country of their primary listing.

Minews. That is very interesting, especially for companies who take listing in Frankfurt, and explains why the volume of trade concentrates on the tiddlers.

FC. Exactly. As a prime example a Canadian junior called Mindoro Resources stood in the spotlight last week on the Frankfurt market. It’s market capitalisation is still relatively small at Euros 14 milion, but after some positive drill results a few weeks ago on their main exploration project Lobo in the Philippines one German newsletter made a pretty good story out of that.

Minews. You will see that our Canadian Correspondent also makes comment about Mindoro so it confirms your point about German retail investors liking stocks that are on the move. They also seem to take notice of tip sheets which can be a rather dangerous game. I wonder how many Mindoro shares were traded last week in Frankfurt compared with Canada.

FC. I will find out. On Tuesday the stock jumped 78 per cent with about 20 per cent of all outstanding shares traded, so that gives an indication. Anyway, the other big mover had to halt trading on its Australian home exchange on Friday. It’s the gold development company Moto Goldmines which is run by Klaus Eckhof. He has long had a following in Germany and the company is actively working on upgrading their resource estimates on four different projects in the Moto goldbelt in Democratic Republic of Congo. We don’t know the exact reason for the trading halt, but rumours of some new important appointments to broaden the management team, a large financing and/or a takeover are coming to the surface.

It is worth pointing out that the company has two different type of shares after a reverse merger into a Canadian shell two months ago and now the normal shares are traded on the Canadian and German markets as well as the ASX.. The second type of shares, called CUFS are a fifth of a normal shares and are traded in Canada and Germany. As the trading halt only included applied to Australian shares the CUFS were traded up 20 per cent on Friday on the Frankfurt market which is a kind of strange situation. We will see what happens next week after the announcement has been made and the trading restarts in Australia again.

Minews. Very strange. Hope no one gets burned. Any interesting newcomers on the German market last week ?

FC. Yes, one of the middle sized Canadian uranium development companies made its debut on the smaller Berlin/Bremen Stock Exchange on Thursday, followed by the more important listing in Frankfurt on Friday. It’s Quincy Energy, a gold and uranium play with different gold properties in Nevada and more exciting uranium projects mainly in the US. The latest research report from one of the larger brokerage houses in Canada reckons it is undervalued against its peer group, but how they work that out on historic resources I am not sure. It will be interesting to see how the shares move next week.

Minews. Thanks for that. I understand you are going to Vancouver next week so we hope to get your update from there