Thor Explorations – Q2 Operations Update At Segilola and Exploration Update at Douta
Segun Lawson, President and CEO of Thor Explorations (TSX.V:THX – US:THXPF), joins us for a financial, production, and exploration update at the producing Segilola Gold Project mine in Nigeria, along with an exploration update at the Douta development project in Senegal.
We review the Q2 metrics around All-In Sustaining Costs “AISC”, head grades, recovery rates, and production output at the Segilola mine of 23,785 ounces of gold produced, right in the middle of Company guidance, and returning a total of 45,128 oz of gold produced in the first half of the year. The mill is also seeing throughput beyond the nameplate expectations and improved higher recovery rates closer to 95.5%. The average head-grade has also risen to around 3-4 g/t, blending high-grade underground ore with above ground stockpiles. All-in sustaining costs are still on track for the annual guidance for between $850-$950 AISC, so there are fantastic margins, and due to outperformance the Company has raised full year guidance to 85,000 to 100,000 ounces of gold.
Next we discussed two other key milestones that happened in Q2. First was the commissioning of Compressed Natural Gas (“CNG”) generators for a total of 6MW of power generating capacity which enables the Company to run the processing operations fully on CNG produced from Nigerian oil and gas operations. In doing so, they significantly reduce their greenhouse gas emissions and this also lowers operating costs. Second was the repayment of an additional tranche of US$14.5million toward the Senior Debt Facility reducing the debt to US$38million.
Focusing on growth of resources through exploration around Segilola, there is the on-going 7,500 meter drill program well underway with the goal to expand resources and mine life as well as find nearby accretive potential open pit satellite deposits that can feed the mill, with more drilling planned after that kicking off in September from at depth from underground looking for more high-grade discoveries to extend the mine life and production pipeline.
We wrap up with the ongoing 6,000 meter exploration at the Douta Project in Senegal, looking to extend the Makosa ore body, successfully connecting it to the Makosa Tail, and expanding it to the north by 1 km, as well as doing further drill testing around the new mineralized discovery at the Mansa target. As the exploration program progresses the goal is to expand the resource to over 1 million ounces, beyond the recent 730,000 ounce Maiden Mineral Resource Estimate for the Makosa Deposit, which was announced November 17th, as well as to conduct and release a Pre Feasibility Study by year end.
If you have any questions for Segun regarding the ongoing work at Thor Explorations, then please email us at either fleck@kereport.com or shad@kereport.com.
Gold price at $1,700 is in a danger zone as markets enter Fed’s blackout period before the July meeting
Anna Golubova – Kitco News – Friday July 15, 2022
“Gold has had a tough week as markets repriced rate hike expectations, and the strong U.S. dollar stole a lot of the safe-haven appeal away from gold. Next week, analysts remain cautious as the $1,700 an ounce level is a dangerous area for gold.”
“Gold fell to an 11-month low as investors shunned the precious metal in favor of the USD amid the risk-off tone across markets,” said ANZ’s senior commodity strategist Daniel Hynes.
“The precious metal is wrapping up the week down more than 2%, its fifth consecutive week of losses, which hasn’t happened in several years. Year-to-date, gold is down around 7%.”
The Gold Market Is Holding Its Ground As New York Fed’s Empire State Survey Jumps To 11.1 In July
Neils Christensen – Kitco News – Friday July 15, 2022
“Friday, the regional central bank said that its Empire State manufacturing survey’s general business conditions index rose to a reading of 11.1 in July, up from June’s negative reading of 1.2 The data handily beat expectations as economists were looking for the index to fall deeper into contraction territory with a reading of -2.1.”
“Thirty-four percent of respondents reported that conditions had improved over the month, and twenty-three percent reported that conditions had worsened,” the report said.
“The gold market is seeing little reaction to the better-than-expected manufacturing data. August gold futures are holding support above $1,700 an ounce. August gold last traded at $1,705.50 an ounce, roughly unchanged on the day.”
Ex, gold’s move lower is the market place believing the Fed is far from over in pushing interest rates higher. I wonder whether again we’re in the phase this month of sell the rumor, buy the fact.
That’s a good question to ponder Doc. We appear to be seeing a “sell the rumor” phase here where most markets along with gold/silver rolled over due to everyone freaking about about the higher CPI inflation reading of 9.1%. The rationale being that the Fed may be emboldened to do another 75 basis point hike and possibly even a 100 basis point hike next week, but then also keep hiking in Sept and possibly again in Nov/Dec, instead of pausing or pivoting to cuts by year-end as many market participants were projecting.
Personally, I felt like the markets had already priced in the 75 basis point hike in July and a 50 basis point hike in September, and likely a pause after that. Maybe the latest reading changes the Fed’s outlook, but I think it will be more telling to see where July’s CPI reading comes in during August, in front of the Fed’s Jackson Hole symposium. If we see a pullback lower in the CPI reading, now that commodities have cooled off and used cars have rolled over, and we see more pressure to the housing market over the next month, then I could see the Fed messaging in August that they’ll do one more hike in September, and then may “pause” to be “data dependent” and stay “nimble.” It will conveniently be in front of the US November elections as well.
At this point, I feel the move down in the general markets is more warranted (from their still really overbought levels on the longer term charts), than what we’ve seen with the continued selling in the PMs has been. I know you felt we needed to hit the lower Bollinger Band though on the monthly charts first, so you’ll probably be right about that as the last test lower for gold.
I really didn’t want to see that $1721 support level fall in gold, nor the $18.70-$19.00 level fall in silver, but they both gave up the ghost earlier this week. When gold dipped below $1700 and Silver got down to $18.01 mid-week, it seemed to be a bit excessive as far as the selling pressure in response to the CPI number and continually surging US dollar as headwinds.
It all seems a bit overdone to me, but I guess the next test for gold will be whether the $1673-$1675 support level holds (that was already tested 3 times last year). As we’ve discussed before, once a support or resistance level gets tested 3 or 4 times it is usually not good and the level is going to fail. What would be disappointing about that is that if $1673 fails to hold as support, then we’ll have seen a definite “lower low” put on the charts, breaking the trend of higher lows we’ve had for 6 years since the Dec 2015 low at $1045.
Some market pundits have suggested that maybe we need to see a spike low below that $1673-$1675 support zone, as a bear trap, to get everyone to do a final capitulation, and but maybe the 200 week moving average around $1650 would come in as the new support for a bounce. Maybe that will be how things play out, but I have to say, that path is a bummer to me as I like to see a pattern of higher lows. Really, that is what was such a disappointment with both $1780 and $1721 failing to hold as support, as they were both lessor “higher lows”.
As for the mining stocks, I agree with my buddies Robert Sinn (Goldfinger) and Erik Wetterling (The Hedgeless Horseman) that they are already priced like Gold is going to $1450 like during the Pandemic Crash from Feb 2020 – April 2020. Some stocks are already trading below where they were during that crash where gold shot down to $1450, so it really doesn’t make much sense with Gold actually being at $1700 currently. It just shows how terrible the sentiment is in this sector right now, and how most investors have completely given up on the mining stocks, even down to irrational valuations.
When I look a the BPGDM (Gold Miners Bullish Percentage Index) it is down around (10.34). A reading lower than the 2016 low in mining stocks at (13.79), and there have only been 2 other periods of time where it was lower in the last 6 years — tax loss selling of 2016 at (7.14) and the pandemic crash in March 2020 at (7.69).
This was a big factor in my thinking lately to deploy the rest of my dry powder into the mining stocks, because, while it is not a perfect timing tool, it is generally on target for marking bottoms and tops, preceeding them typically by a few weeks. When the BPGDM was flashing 100 for several weeks in a row in late June – mid July of 2020, I kept saying on the blog that it was time to harvest some gains as it was maxed out and likely marking an intermediate top. Boy did it ever… the miners topped in August just a few weeks later and we’ve been in a larger downtrend since then in the Summer of 2020 in the PM mining stocks.
It’s likely we’ll see see the miners bottom here within a few weeks with such a low reading that we saw this week in the BPGDM of (10.34). We’ve seen a lot of other bottoms from (13 – 24) over the last few years, so things are pretty oversold now. Could they go lower… of course they could, but these breadth readings show just how crappy most of the stocks in the sector are doing right now. Matthew posted a chart sometime recently that show 0% of companies in a certain index were trading above their 200 day moving averages… That makes this a pretty bombed out sector.
Doc, if I had as much cash as you did, personally I’d be pretty aggressively putting at least a big chunk of it to work this last week to scoop up the deals we see in so many stocks. But hey…. I’m often a little bit too early to the turn. Still, I’d rather be too early and sit through another 10-20% downdraft in the miners, than miss a 50%-200% uptick in the miners in a very short amount of time and get stuck chasing. If we see a short-covering rally in the mid-tiers and royalty companies and largest developers held in the ETFs, then while we may not see a V-shaped recovery overall, we still could see a violent snap-back rally to the upside to kick things off, and I want to be in before that to potentially lighten up on that first big move higher.
Here’s a chart of the BPGDM for consideration:
This is why gold topped in Q1:
https://kingworldnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/07/KWN-Pie-I-7132022.jpg
Referring to the inflation of the 1970s, Paul Volcker said: “It was probably a mistake to allow gold to rise so high.”
There’s your foreshadowing. Of course such activity can only buy them time, not stop the rise permanently.
I’m a bit tired after a long day and may not have understood the implications of the spike in notional amounts of gold derivatives held by banks chart.
Is the data outlined suggesting that all the new derivatives accumulated in Q1 is what capped the price of gold in March?
Is this suggesting that the banks purposely capped the price increase in gold by taking out these derivatives, when they saw the gold futures shoot back up above $2,000?
Was this to heed Volcker’s prior reflections about letting gold run too high in the last big rate hiking cycle due to runaway inflation in the 1970s ?
The full article is worth reading:
https://kingworldnews.com/gold-market-rigged-a-chart-says-a-trillion-words/
The old Volcker quote was just something I remembered from years ago. With the 40 year bond bubble now popped, we can expect extraordinary measures to keep coming from the people that caused this unfolding catastrophe.
Thanks for sharing the link to the article.
“Doc, if I had as much cash as you did, personally I’d be pretty aggressively putting at least a big chunk of it to work this last week to scoop up the deals we see in so many stocks. But hey…. I’m often a little bit too early to the turn. Still, I’d rather be too early and sit through another 10-20% downdraft in the miners, than miss a 50%-200% uptick in the miners in a very short amount of time and get stuck chasing. If we see a short-covering rally in the mid-tiers and royalty companies and largest developers held in the ETFs, then while we may not see a V-shaped recovery overall, we still could see a violent snap-back rally to the upside to kick things off, and I want to be in before that to potentially lighten up on that first big move higher.” Ex, that’s the dilemma and you hit the nail on the head—–I was listening to Rick Rule recently and he was talking about how he had loaded up and that was when stocks were higher—of course he is correct in believing that “so what” if the stocks moved further down since they’re as cheap as they’ve been in a long time and the upside is potentially awesome. I believe we probably have one more move down in gold and then I get more aggressive. If I’m wrong I have plenty of time to load up since they’re cheap beyond reason.
Yeah Doc. Good thoughts. There’s no perfect way to play it, and nobody knows exactly when the bottom will be put in. I agree with Rick Rule, that there is price and there is also value. If the price is already substantially less than the reasonable value, then one is already buying cheap, so then when the return to the mean sets in the position will already be accretive. What’s more is if this scenario occurs with a company still continually building more value, while it remains deeply discounted, then it could be an exponentially accretive position staked at present.
In the Rick Rule & Brien Lundin interview that was posted on the blog this week under the Brien Lundin interview Cory & I did with him, Rick had made this same point, and mentioned he was deploying a lot of his capital. I believe that video was filmed last week or earlier this week, so it matched up with what I was doing in my own portfolio accumulating more in about 30 existing positions, and I also blew out a some old portfolio dogs to rotate those funds into my more higher conviction names.
As mentioned, you are probably correct about the lower levels still to come and tagging the lower Bollinger Bands on the monthly charts first. My thesis is similar to Rick’s in that buying now is still acquiring these companies when they are deeply oversold, and if they correct a bit further, we’re both prepared to stomach it with the high conviction that medium to longer term these will have been excellent purchases. Like Rick said, I’d rather be early than late as well, but to your point, even if you get in once the trend is underway, there is still plenty of room to get in very low on the way back up.
My only point with the BPGDM chart above, was that that positive breadth is terrible in the sector right now, and that reading around 10 is a great spot to accumulate most gold mining stocks. In addition, most of the main mid-tier producers and smaller producers, the developers, and the explorers are trading under their 200 day moving averages so things are pretty bombed out.
It’s my thesis that there will eventually be at least a sudden initial pop in the mining stocks due to a short-covering rally, and I just want to be in front of that move. That move will likely get a bit ahead of itself and go too far too fast, so I’ll likely fade it on the way higher to raise some more funds, and then when it does it’s first pullback, buy back in a bit lower, but still higher than where the initial move started from.
Over $31 billion in trade is rail-landlocked or stuck at anchor off U.S. coasts
Lori Ann LaRocco – CNBC – Friday July 15, 2022
– $1.5 billion in trade is landlocked at the Ports of Long Beach and Los Angeles waiting for rail service.
– Rail dwell in San Pedro Bay is over 11 days, almost four times what it was in January 2022, and a labor dispute between rails and unions led the Biden administration to establish an emergency board on Friday to head off the potential for a strike.
– Roughly $30 billion in trade is on vessels anchored off the East Coast and West Coast, and the situation in Europe is similar.
https://www.cnbc.com/2022/07/15/31-billion-in-trade-is-rail-landlocked-or-stuck-off-us-coasts.html
Why Inflation Might Have Peaked In June: S&P 500 Implications
Samuel Smith – Seeking Alpha – Jul. 15, 2022
“The June CPI data came in at 9.1%, a four-decade high that is sending the S&P 500 (NYSEARCA:SPY) and Nasdaq (QQQ) into another downdraft.”
“While the ramifications of accelerating year-over-year inflation are certainly not positive, and include the increased likelihood of a full 100 basis point Federal Reserve rate hike at its next meeting, there is potentially light at the end of the tunnel.”
“In this article, we will share five reasons why we think inflation may have peaked in June, why we think inflation will still remain at an elevated level for the foreseeable future why real interest rates will remain negative, and what we think this will mean for the S&P 500 moving forward…”
https://seekingalpha.com/article/4523494-why-inflation-peaked-june-s-and-p-500-implications
Home Sales Plummet In SC By Double Digits. Here’s Where It’s Worst And Why Buyers Aren’t Biting
Patrick McCreless – Thu, July 14, 2022
“Home sales fell by double digits across most of South Carolina in June as rising costs took their toll on buyers. Some housing industry experts say a spike in mortgage interest rates this year combined with ever more soaring home prices have caused a slowdown in the market.”
https://www.yahoo.com/news/home-sales-plummet-sc-double-090000703.html
I just happen to live in Bluffton, SC, right next to Hilton Head Island. Great golf, lots of Yankees moving here to retire. After housing spike, people are waiting for Biden administration debolce to hit the fan. What good could possibly come from these color-coded trans morons?
Abortion is good. Go figure what 1 nation under God has to say about BONE DEEP
Growth in SC……….. is not going to stop………. Great place ……. I lived in Charleston , SC……for 4 yrs.
The Trend has been going on for several years…… from lets say 06…….
OOTB, the article was not about growth in South Carolina stopping, more so that the housing market had slowed down and home sales were down double digits.
That is happening all over the country where the housing market is rolling over right now, as mortgage rates go up with interest rates and houses have become totally unaffordable ripping up to ridiculous levels. Time for gravity to set in and bring prices back to Earth.
We discussed last week that new home starts from construction are down double digits, and home sale cancelations and home build cancelations are up double digits. That is the place we are at in the cycle, and I’d expect to the trend of lowering asking prices and home prices to continue falling to persist; (instead of the trend we saw of raising asking prices and bids over asking the last few years, which is now over.)
The “everything bubble” has now popped, and real estate will not be spared the deflation in prices. Real estate had become comically inflated and people that piled in to ever rising home prices the last 2 years just bought the top of the cycle.
Hello Shad…………
Thanks for the reply.
I have a lot to say, concerning real estate,but,…….
I was just making a comment to Buzz,… concerning SC…….
more of the thought,,,,,,real estate is local.
Understood Jerry. Yes, Charleston has been hot for the last 2 decades, and we’ve visited there about 5 times in the last 9 years.
I was just sharing some thoughts on real estate data we are seeing everywhere in the US. I don’t think Charleston will be spared, but it may hold up better than other parts of SC, as noted in the article I posted above about home sales dropping double digits across the state, which kicked off this this thread about real estate in SC and led to Buzz’s response in the first place. Cheers!
U.S. Home Builder Sentiment Plunges
Dan Burns – July 18, 2022
“U.S. home builder sentiment plummeted in July to its lowest level since the early months of the coronavirus pandemic, as high inflation and the steepest borrowing costs in more than a decade brought customer traffic to a near standstill.”
“At the same time, a gauge of activity in the services sector activity in the U.S. Northeast turned negative this month for the first time in a year, and firms there do not see an improvement over the next six months.”
“”Production bottlenecks, rising home building costs and high inflation are causing many builders to halt construction because the cost of land, construction and financing exceeds the market value of the home,” NAHB Chairman Jerry Konter, a home builder and developer from Savannah, Georgia, said in a statement. “In another sign of a softening market, 13% of builders in the HMI survey reported reducing home prices in the past month to bolster sales and/or limit cancellations.”
Bye the way, should the conventional market be in store for another leg down, UVXY a buy down here……..
Thor Explorations (TSX.V: THX): Nigeria’s Most Advanced Gold Project
Business Television – April 28, 2022
https://youtu.be/_fpQwOiNp3g