Baba, I thought Clevenger was the best I ever heard him.
I though Clevenger was more clear on the committment to scale-up Velardean than ever before and rightly suggested to slow down in Argentina with only some further exploration drilling at this time. He talked about possibly JV'ing El Quevar but also made it clear his view that El Quevar was a much bigger system with lots more upside resource to come and I fully asgree with going slower there for now given the primary goal of more than doubling production at Velardena and present Argentinian government volatility. Let's not foget that Velardena is a monster property that has never ever come close to true market value which in my view is still probably closer $1-1.5 billion than $200 million, the market will properly re-value assets again someday for the entire precious metal sector which at this time are historically low especially compared to actual metal prices.
I also clearly heard his view that Velardena was compared to a very prosperous project that produced for 100 years and that for sure Velardena would be producing at least 50 years from now. These are very strong statements and views plus he talked about the resource and his view was the inferred would easily be restored to the Micon numbers and if you listened closely probably higher. I concur with this view 100% and have said so many times in the past and haven't changed my view. I thought many of our problems were solved when Golden merged with ECU because they brought most of what we needed and am certainly disappointed in being behind plan by 6 months but I still think they can get it done and get this company back on track and valued where it belongs but it will take some time and a shift in market sentiment for PM equites which there have been some recent positive signs.
He talked about further ratinonalization of the very large exploration porfolio and how the company would keep the best properties while out-sourcing the rest in JV's or out right sales or simply dropping some. He sounded like sale prices are still less than ideal in the market but suggested some deals are close.
He suggested the company did the equity offering because it was the best choice at this point in time from a cost standpoint and that he hoped and wanted to avoid future equity offerings. He expects cashflow to provide and property sales to provide future capital needs for growth and expansion and based on what I heard and future gold/silver prices, this could very well work.
These are but a few quick things I heard in his presentation that I recall from listening to it a week or so ago and I only listened once. Not sure what you heard Baba, maybe I should go listen again. I'm out the door now for Thankgiving dinner at my brothers and may listen again later.
