Calvin, while I respect your contributions and your reasoning, the above paragraph does cause me concern.
Should Teck decide to slow play Schaft Creek for another several years, how are we going to succcessfully shop our 25%?
If Teck really is the only logical customer for this property, what sort of negotitions leverage will Ernesto have? Some say Teck would be foolish not to develop the area soonest to take advantage of higher copper prices in the future, but the market sure hasn't shown us any confidence by way of the share price. Not only are we not attracting significant new investors, we're losing ones that we had.
I realize junior miners have taken a beating almost across the board, but I still wonder how there isn't at least one investor out there with deep pockets (think of the years of CUU's Whistler conferences) who sees a prime opportunity to make a tidy profit on this bet???
And how can we get top dollar if no other major is interested in grabbing a piece of this action?
Remember the days when a lot of us were sure we were destined for a bidding war? Predictions of $5 to $7 were common.
Now some dare to say we'll still a $2 buyout (probably mostly in Teck shares), but even that seems like a stretch from 19 cents as it's more than a 10-bagger.
Elmer has stated all along that CUU is an explorer, not a miner. In some ways it seems more and more likely that CUU might have to go along for the ride to production if it wants to see optimal value out of this investment. And production is still several years off, at best.
I hate to sound negative but it sure is a sorry state of affairs.
You're right. Teck can slow play us but this is how I see it as well.
SC has been in Teck hand's for almost 2 years.
Teck has drilled the waste area to see if the waste is mineralized. The results showed yes.
From Prospekt's post earlier.
I discovered today that a technical report can be filed by Copper Fox without an independent Qualified Person because the report is being prepared through a JV with a Producing Issuer. Teck is a Producing Issuer because they have revenues of both $30 million in the past year, and $90 million over the past three years.
Here's the clause from the 43-101 regulations:
(4) Despite subsection (1), a technical report required to be filed by an issuer
concerning a property which is or will be the subject of a joint venture with a
producing issuer is not required to be prepared by or under the supervision of an
independent qualified person, if the qualified person preparing or supervising the
preparation of the report relies on scientific and technical information prepared
by or under the supervision of a qualified person that is an employee or consultant
of the producing issuer.
So we have the waste taken care of in a way.
Now, we have Teck to work on the recoveries, the pit slope, and looking over at the entire project to see if we can reduce the construction timeline. You then include the current exchange rates (97 cents in FS) that increases the value of the project even further.
So in October, CUU will have on hand an updated copy of the FS that was looked over by Teck and not a third party engineering company to shop our 25% if Teck doesn't want it.
Remember, Teck looked over this project, the optimization studies will be finished by them. There's a lot more credit in the value of the project when it's been done by a major miner. They know the true cost of construction, they know how fast they can get it working.
I think it's best to just wait and see how the JV meeting goes next month.
