Just two things from the HIVE (HIVE.v) quarterly financials last night

You can fight out the meaning of the borderline-passable gross margin, the stored coins and what have you all by yourself. I just want to point out two numbers on the P+L that stuck out at me:

That travel number is hilarious, you can run a neat and efficient junior exploreco for the price of HIVE's travel. It also gives you some idea how much it costs to fly a fully loaded private jet down to Cartagena from Vancouver, but that's another story.

But the really interesting one is that DD&A number, because I know I'm not the brightest lightbulb when it comes to the intricacies of the wonderful world of crypto, but I do know my way around a set of RegFs. And you're telling me that $16.2m of that snazzy shiny computery kit that goes out of fashion quickly due to the well-documented ETH hashrate burden was only marked down by a million, guys? Seriously? Wonks and nerds like me who care about such things will know why this could be important for the future, the rest of you can hi-five over the temperature in Sweden. Okay, never mind and no need to answer, let's move on so here's a pleasant tune with which to brighten your day:

Youtube here.

Thanks, Bobby!

Bobby Genovese and BG Capital Group just sent me over an RSVP invite for the Bunker Hill Mining bash at PDAC on Sunday. And that's a good thing:

Because we all need to remember that Bobby G is the biggest shareholder, is pulling all the strings on this vehicle and is also the very same Bobby Genovese facing criminal fraud charges from the US SEC for the way he pumped and dumped Bunker Hill in its last incarnation, Liberty Silver, for millions in ill-gotten gains. Presumably James West will be there, his partner in crime the last time around. Say hi for me, yeah? 

Anyway, all readers of IKN should get their tails down to the BNKR bash at the Hockey Hall of Fame (30 Yonge St) on Sunday March 4th, starts 6:30pm and goes on til 11pm. Tell the doorman Otto sent you, mmmkay?

Angry Geologist does Pretium (PVG)

Blinking flip and gawd love us, the lady is on a roll at the moment. Here's TAG doing Pretium (PVG), with eyes on the presentation the company just gave to BMO this week. And by the way, I was out by 0.16g/t and that on the math is a good call, in this type of production environment we're talking about rounding errors. Anyway, consider me in agreement with TAG on this one.

PS: We also note that Pretium (PVG) had its first fatal accident of a worker at the Brucejack mine two days ago. Maybe they forgot to announce that to the wider world, or perhaps they're going the Tahoe Resources route and just burying (pardon the pun) any bad news of this type.

By the way, that Lithium X (LIX.v) break fee and escrow agreement

Reader 'D' pointed this out in a mail this morning:

"The reverse break fee has been secured through the deposit of US$16,000,000 in trust with Lithium X’s counsel in Hong Kong, subject to the terms of an escrow agreement under which those funds may not be released without the consent of both parties"

Ever seen an escrow with a veto clause before? What kind of wet-behind-the-ears CEO agreed to these terms, can't be ver....ah, yeah. Right.

Aurania Resources (ARU.v): At last! Geologists who can speak my language!

This from the current Aurania Resources (ARU.v) photo gallery:

Wonderful. IKN thanks A. Reader for the heads-up.

Bacanora (BCN.v), NextView and Lithium X (LIX.v)

Your humble scribe's attention is caught by this news release from Bacanora Minerals (BCN.v) this evening, in which this company dedicated to lithium states that it has failed to receive the C$53.5m approx promised to it by NextView Capital. The deal, first announced in mid-December 2017, was supposed to have closed at the end of January. When it didn't BCN announced that it was giving NextView more time and stated among other things that... "...both parties remain committed to proceeding with the Placing."

But now it looks like NextView couldn't come up with the cash. Time's up. Deal's off. No soup for you. Now, does that remind you of anything? Well...

• Lithium X (LIX.v) is a lithium junior
• In mid-December it received a buyout offer from a company called NextView Capital, ticket price C$265m.
• Yes, that's the same NextView Capital, why did you ask?
• The deal was supposed to have closed a couple of weeks ago, but then on February 14th LIX.v announced that NextView needed more time. To quote that NR, "NextView has advised the Company that it is seeking alternative funding from a commercial lender in order to obtain the required funds on the most competitive terms available and that the proposed facility with the commercial lender is currently anticipated to be established and funded shortly but has been delayed by, and until after, the Chinese New Year holiday."

But hey, I'm sure everything will be all right. Y'know, just get the Chinese New Year out the way and the cheque will be winging its way over. Right?

"There's a sardonic blogger called Inca Kola..."

The dulcet tones of Andrew Bell give the 2018 IKN Bingo Card a pumperooney on 'Market Call today. Right here, minute 1:50.

Kintavar (KTR.v)

Seriously, why do I bother? This gets pumped in one of those blather and nonsense NRs in mid-January that gets the mouthbreathers all worked up, including...

In total, 10 of the 12 drill holes intercepted the favorable lithologies with copper mineralization in the form of bornite and chalcopyrite. Out of these holes, 7 holes intercepted several tens of meters of copper mineralization.
 

“We are very pleased with this first drilling program on the Mitchi project. We drilled more meters than expected because several of the holes showed mineralization deeper than first thought. We now believe this could be both a near surface open pit type target and also an underground target beneath.” commented Kiril Mugerman, President and CEO of Kintavar Exploration.

...but when reality bites it turns out to be:

"KINTAVAR DRILLS 206.3 METERS OF COPPER MINERALIZATION (0.18% Cu & 1.65 g/t Ag) WITH TWO MAIN ZONES OF 21.9m OF 0.52% Cu & 5.62 g/t Ag AND 16.5m OF 0.50% Cu & 4.30 g/t Ag"

...in the NR today. If the CEO is "very pleased" with those kind of numbers he'd have a multiple orgasm in public if he ever found something economically viable on his property. And be clear, you can call it "mineralization" til the cows come home, but even with the best will in the world and favourable met, recoveries and current metals prices that rock is worth no more than U$11.50 per tonne. The only company who could mine that number at a profit is Nevsun and that's because their....cough...labour costs are so low. Why this KTR thing's  share price is down just 3c today and the company still running a market cap of $28m is beyond me, it's worth zero. Plain fat zero.

In the end, the neophytes who buy into these pumps have three choices:

1) Learn the cheap way (this involves not acting like a nodding donkey every time you get a pitch run at you)

2) Learn the hard way (e.g. KTR.v, but please remember the names of the people who got you into this crapola).

3) Just carry on flushing your own money down the toilet, all your life. And as we live in a (relatively) free society, don't think for a minute that I'm going to try to stop you. Your life, do with it what you want. Hell, do it long enough and become one of the scumbag pumpers if you like.

Your friendly reliable Cassandra on the Lucara (LUC.to) news

There are so many red flags to this idea it's difficult to know where to start.

1) Wouldn't you love to know just why Lamb decided to resign rather than go along with this whole "disrupt diamonds" gig?

2) You remember how he got its hind quarters handed back on a plate on the Lesedi La Rona? How LUC put it up for auction in its raw state for U$70m reserve, how the establishment warned the market to stay away, how bidding only got to U$61m, then how it was quietly sold a year later for U$53m? 

3) And now LUC is taking on the establishment again, only in a much more dangerous way for De Beers and all its friends.

4) What's more, Marin Katusa manages to get a seven thousand word report out on the LUC plan, with nuance and the whole "disrupt mining" strategy, within about three minutes of the  NR coming out yesterday. Katusa of all people! The single worst and most blatant pump and dumper in the sector (and my stars there's competition) gets the quiet inside backstory from the Thomas/Lundin/McLeod Seltzer triumvirate and manages to put it all into a long 'splainer words of two syllables max for his willing crop of retail, proofed to within an inch of its life and all shiny-clean ready to roll. I mean, gimme a break here, the quiet tip-off to the chattering classes is one thing, blatant inside information from a supposedly whiter-than-white board of directors to the worst offending BS artist in Vancouver is quite another.

5) The thing is, the "disrupt mining" plan is being laid out as if LUC is the diamond world's answer to Uber. It's not. Big differences. As in biiiiiiiig differences. Taxi driving is a business model that has a deep supply pool and had a product with obvious cost weakness. The majority of adult human beings can supply the skill (drive a car) but only a few people were allowed to charge money to drive a taxi (badge holders, who paid a prohibitive price for the privilege). So lets talk about diamonds for a second:

• The rough diamond is a small part of the price you pay for the finished product. I'm not a diamond expert and will never pretend to be, but even I know the difference between a rough diamond and what you see set in an engagement ring. I know the price a company like LUC gets for its diamonds on average and the price of a cut stone. I know what the "Four Cs" are and only three of them depend on the quality of the stone, while at least one is all about how human hands treat it and arguably two others are highly influenced by the skill of diamond cutting.

• Which brings us to the second key point, the finished product depends on highly skilled labour. This is not driving a car, it's not letting out your owned property for a night. Very few human beings can do the job we're talking about here, the equipment is expensive, the sector prohibitive to enter. 

• Which also means that a small overall supplier to those human beings, i.e. Lucara, can either try to steal the lunch of the big player in the sector (De Beers) and be crushed like a pesky insect, or it can STFU and make its reasonable profit on the things that come out of its mines. When the call goes out from De Beers to stay away from all LUC diamonds, not just a single 1,109 carat example, LUC will suddenly find its wares on a secondary market at secondary prices.

• And we haven't even mentioned the certification process yet! A closed shop like no other and controlled by serious, establishment money, they will of course let a big, headline-making diamond of size get the labels it deserves but what happens to the normal run-of mine material from a company that wants to wrest the market away from the people who pay their dinners?

What LUC announced yesterday is its own suicide note as a diamond miner. The upper echelons of De Beers will be worried about what was announced, but do you seriously think they're just going to let LUC take their market away thanks to a new-fangled blockchain idea? They've never faced competition to their quasi-monopoly before? They haven't squashed any newcomers like nuisance gadflies before? They've remained at the very top of one of the most profitable businesses in the world using totally above-board and proper business strategies? That Marin Katusa is in cahoots with this scheme is all the more sophisticated sector player needs to know about LUC going forward, but it only takes a few minutes' thought to see the glaring holes and obvious mortal weaknesses in what LUC is trying to achieve. It's less "disrupt diamonds", more "disrupt retirement plans of LUC shareholders" and the daydreaming fools now running this company need to be stopped for their own good.

Angry Geologist does Cordoba Minerals (CDB.v)

Right here.

Your 2018 PDAC Bingo Card

Yes indeed ladies and gentlemen, it's that wonderful time of the year again and in time-honoured style IKN offers up its traditional turkey and stuffing PDAC Bingo Card for your edification and enjoyment at the big Toronto bash next week. As always, instructions are simplicity incarnate:

1) Print off your copy

2) Walk around PDAC next week and when you overhear one of the phrases, cross it off.

3) As soon as you fill your card, send it in to IKN Nerve Centre for your fabulous prize*.

So without further ado, here's the 2018 edition of PDAC Bingo:

Vote early and often!

*A chance to kiss Tim Oliver's asses

Newcrest is basically trying to buy Latin America

Piece by piece. Added to SolGold and now Lundin Gold in Ecuador yesterday, this morning we've had news it's moving on Mirasol in Chile and now Almadex in Mexico.

When they go JV on something in Venezuela, we'll know they're serious.