BREAKING: Tahoe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) La Arena shut down due to employee strike action (UPDATED=

As from just a couple of hours ago (Saturday April 21st), the La Arena gold mine in La Libertad owned by Tahoe Resources (TAHO) (THO.to) has been shut down, due to a general and indefinite strike by its workforce. Here's a photo from the scene as the strike began:

The strike has been called on a straw breaking camel's back decision. The long-term indifference and arrogance of management toward its workforce is not going to be taken by them any longer, we understand. For more information, please do not hesitate to contact Edie Hofmeister.

UPDATE: This link to a local media channel states that the workers are striking because TAHO has not yet paid them the statutory workers' profit participation bonus for 2017 and the end of abusive practices of management toward them. They demand the presence of General Manager Phil Drake and will continue the strike action until their demands are met. We also hear that the strike action started with a smaller contingent of workers yesterday Friday afternoon, but then became a general strike when the strikers were threatened with immediate dismissal. Here's another photo:

The top three most visited IKN posts this week are...

...in reverse order:

Third Place: "Pretium (PVG): Aaaaaaaaaaand it's gone". It's going to be really interesting to see how PVG prepares the market for the inevitable equity raise.

Second Place: "The 2018 World Silver Survey has a hidden bullish signal for the metal". Plenty more on the subject of silver in this weekend's edition of The IKN Weekly.
 

First Place: "Evrim Resources (EVM.v): In praise of Joe Mazumdar and Exploration Insights". It's suddenly a hot stock, which means a post with its name in it is always going to get plenty of clicks (even though I don't own it and have never covered it personally...still true today). It's also been interesting to see all the newsletter and investment community whores line up and tell the world they were first, they called EVM before the rest, me me me me!, look how wonderful (etc). Here's a fact: Brent Cook and Joe Mazumdar have been reco'ing Evrim since 2015, Joe made it not simply a reco but a Top Pick for 2018. That's the difference between the also-rans and the real brains in the mining commentary world so be in no doubt, Exploration Insights really is the best junior mining newsletter out there. Period.

It's a late Friday NR special: Agnico (AEM) dumps Belo Sun (BSX.to)

Here's the NR, here's the pay dirt:

TORONTO, April 20, 2018 /CNW/ - Agnico Eagle Mines Limited (NYSE: AEM, TSX: AEM) ("Agnico Eagle" or the "Company") announced today that it has disposed of 44,551,000 common shares of Belo Sun Mining Corp. ("Belo Sun") in a pre-arranged trade executed through the facilities of the Toronto Stock Exchange (the "TSX").  The sale price was C$0.335 per common share (the 30-day volume weighted average price of the common shares of Belo Sun on the TSX at the time of the trade), for aggregate proceeds of C$14,924,585.

The Company reviews its portfolio of equity investments in junior mining companies on an ongoing basis.  The Company completed the disposition in order to monetize a non-core asset held in its portfolio.
Immediately prior to the disposition, Agnico Eagle owned 89,102,760 common shares of Belo Sun, representing approximately 19.14% of the issued and outstanding common shares of Belo Sun on a non-diluted basis.  Following the disposition, Agnico Eagle owns 44,551,760 common shares of Belo Sun, representing approximately 9.57% of the issued and outstanding common shares of Belo Sun on a non-diluted basis.

Ottotrans: AEM ran out of patience. That takes AEM's holding in BSX to under 10%, which means that from now on if the block buyer doesn't take the rest in the next two months they'll dump the rest into the market without having to tell anyone.

PS: Back in December 2017 in the subscriber-only IKN Weekly edition IKN446, while commenting on the latest round of negative news for BSX, we ran the calc on the cost average for AEM on BSX.to shares. It went like this:

Here’s how AEM has bought into BSX, three trades between 2015 and 2016:

• 62.5m shares bought at 24c
• 11.68m shares bought at 53c
• 15.42m shares bought at 97c per share

That first move at the market bottom was a good entry point, since then they’ve topped up twice and in total have spent CAD$36.15m spent for 89.6m shares, an average of 40.3c per share.

So AEM is taking a small loss on exit. No biggie though.

That "up on a down day" feeling

Don't say you weren't warned.

The Friday OT: Mendelssohn Violin Concerto in E Minor (Opus 64)

I got reminded of this piece by twitterpal sez me man earlier in the week. One of those moments when just one semi-random comment from one person will zoom you back into your past, way back when I lost count of the number of times I listened to this on an old cassette Walkman. This version has Hilary Hahn on lead fiddle with the Frankfurt Radio Symphony Orchestra behind and is an intense experience, especially the famous last movement.

Youtube here.

Minera IRL (MIRL.cse) mailbag

On the back of this NR out of Minera IRL today...

LIMA, Peru, April 20, 2018 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Minera IRL Limited ("Minera IRL" or the "Company"), (BVL:MIRL) (CSE:MIRL), the Latin America gold mining company, is pleased to provide an update on the COFIDE arbitration pending before the Chamber of Commerce of Lima, a program at its Corihuarmi mine initiated in an effort to minimize production costs, and the status of the new technical report being prepared by Mining Plus.

In the arbitration, the Company has filed its statement of claim on February 28 and the Arbitral Tribunal is currently waiting on Corporación Financiera de Desarrollo S.A. ("COFIDE") to present its response.  In the interim, the Arbitral Tribunal has ordered that the protective order obtained from the Superior Court of Justice of Lima preventing COFIDE from collecting the US$ 70 million Bridge Loan debt or executing on its payment guarantees, will be extended until the arbitration is concluded.

At Corihuarmi, the Company has initiated a review of its metallurgy, hauling and blasting processes in an effort to improve recovery levels and reduce production costs. The Company has also begun to explore areas near Corihuarmi in an effort to identify new mineralization.

Meanwhile, Mining Plus continues to work towards completing its new National Instrument 43-101 compliant technical report to replace the report prepared by Andean Consulting Group SAC filed on the Company's SEDAR profile on October 2, 2017. Mining Plus has advised that the underlying geological model and the modifying factors have not changed from the previous model and that it expects to complete the report before the end of April, 2018, on schedule. Mining Plus estimates that the mine will continue producing until 2020, which is in-line with previous estimates.

...your humble scribe receives a mail from A. Reader who asks:

"And does COFIDE have a time constraint/deadline by which to submit response?"

It's a good question. So I found out. It's end of June latest.

Don't believe everything you read in GMO

From Global Mining Observer yesterday:

"Penasquito is sitting on 53 million ounces of gold, worth around $70bn at prices today"

From Goldcorp (GG) AIF, out March 23rd 2018:

So, 2.35m oz gold, 237.53m oz Ag, large amounts of Zn and Pb. If you're going to write asslicking pump pieces on mining companies you have to get your basic facts right, else look really dumbass Alex. And by the way, it's "Peñasquito" with and enye (Ñ), not Penasquito, basic spelling helps too. If you don't believe me, try wishing a Spanish speaker "feliz ano nuevo".

UPDATE: Precisely, Mr. Black:

We like Twitter.



 

Zinc One (Z.v) files a 44-101 short form prospectus

Do not say you were not warned by this humble corner of cyberspace. On SEDAR tonight:

APPENDIX A - NOTICE DECLARING INTENTION TO BE QUALIFIED UNDER NATIONAL INSTRUMENT 44-101 SHORT FORM PROSPECTUS DISTRIBUTIONS
(“NI 44-101”)
April 19, 2018
TO: BRITISH COLUMBIA SECURITIES COMMISSION
AND TO: ALBERTA SECURITIES COMMISSION
ZINC ONE RESOURCES INC. (the “Issuer”) intends to be qualified to file a short form prospectus under NI 44-101. The Issuer acknowledges that it must satisfy all applicable qualification criteria prior to filing a preliminary short form prospectus. This notice does not evidence the Issuer’s intent to file a short form prospectus, to enter into any particular financing or transaction or to become a reporting issuer in any jurisdiction. This notice will remain in effect until withdrawn by the Issuer.
ZINC ONE RESOURCES INC.
“James Walchuck”
______________________
James Walchuck,
Chief Executive Officer

As they're going the 44-101 route it means that main player Elefterios Aligizakis, along with stooges Neumeyer and Ameduri, will be able to dump their paper immediately into the inevitable pump.

Glance Technologies (GET.cse): When a proxy slate battle turns into pure comedy gold

Before serving up the links, please be clear that this humble corner of cyberspace has no dog in this fight. In fact, your humble scribe only found out that this company exists this morning so no share position here and no worries about how the proxy battle turns out, either. 

With that said, be aware that GET board of director member, one Penny Green, is heading a dissident slate and is looking to wrest control from the current board and officers. To that end, she has nominated a new slate to be considered by shareholders at the upcoming AGM. Therefore please take time and check out the following:

1) The GET NR dated April 12th that focuses on John LoGiudice, one of Ms. Green’s dissident nominees for the Glance Board of Directors.

2) The GET NR dated April 18th that focuses on Penny Green herself.

3) The GET NR dated April 19th that focuses on Hugo Kotar, another of the dissident nominees.

These three NRs are absolute comedy gold for connoisseurs of the Canadian Cap Mkts scene. I sincerely thank reader A. Person for bringing them to my attention, I've been wetting myself laughing all morning.

UPDATE: Reader 'T' adds:

RE:Glance

I think you are missing the best part. Penny's sister is the CTO and the brother-in-law is the CEO. Talk about airing the family laundry for everyone to see!

All the evidence you'll ever need that Asanko Gold (AKG) is headed higher

Even after a dog's breakfast of a Q1 production announcement, AKG stock moves up on the day:

Right on schedule, this is a market saying, "We don't care any more, Gold Fields is taking away the debt and it's still going to produce 200k oz Au this year....optionality! Buy!". Also, as a more badly run gold miner is difficult to find, when GFI brings in its adult supervision it cannot get any  worse and will likely improve. This U$1.05/U$1.07 level is resistance, when it breaks AKG is going back to book value (around U$1.40) and Gold Fields gets its round of applause.

Disclosure: I'm long AKG since 93c a couple of weeks ago. Took on the trade specifically because of this as it's working as planned this shameless auto-pump post exists. Live with it.

Asanko Gold (AKG) 1q18 production

NR here. Well, this looks profitable:

 
Why is Peter Breese still CEO? Asking Gold Fields, asking anyone with a brain.

First Majestic (FR.to) (AG) puts in a stinker of a Q1

Right here, YoY drops everywhere you look. And have you noticed how all that "The Purest Silver Play Out There" talk has quietly slipped off the table? Nowadays less than 56% of its production comes from the metal in the corporate title.

UPDATED: 17 miners trapped in a Gran Colombia Gold (GCM.to) mine in Marmato, Colombia

News this afternoon is that there has been a mine cave-in at the 'La Socorro' gold mine in Marmato, Colombia, which is one of the small scale mines in that town which supplies Gran Colombia Gold (GCM.to). Rescue workers say the the trapped workers are alive and well and have enough oxygen to breathe.

UPDATE: They've been rescued. Good.

The 2018 World Silver Survey has a hidden bullish signal for the metal

The Silver Institute 2018 World Silver Survey is out (as from last week) so get your copy here, a free 104 page PDF download. And among the data on offer, this sticks out:

Coin and bar demand dropped substantially last year. That's what it looks like when silverbugs throw in the towel and that's as strong a contrary buy signal as they get. When the dumbest of dumb money does one thing, do the opposite for pleasure and profit.

Macri has not brought Argentina's inflation rate under control

The following is from IKN465 last weekend, an expansion on the fact that despite the way the subject has mysteriously dropped off the world's financial agenda (now CFK is not longer in power), Argentina's inflation rate remains stubbornly high and President Macri has failed to make the type of meaningful difference he promised. That could mean serious trouble for the Macri administration down the line, as history has ample evidence that Argentinians will only suck up a certain amount of austerity policies before pushing back. And hard. 

Read on.

Argentina inflation: Do not underestimate this issue

Not a mining subject, but anyone considering investment exposure to Argentina needs to consider this angle. It’s not easy getting an accurate historical read on the inflation rate in Argentina, firstly because it’s high and statistically that means even small margins of error compound into large ones over time. Secondly because the official INDEC stats people were obviously BSsing the world in the Kirchner years.

However, we can get a reasonable approximation using a hybrid of sources since the country’s financial crash in 2001. In the first period we rely on private consultancy data, that goes to 2012. Then in the period 2012 to 2016 there’s something called the “Inflación Congreso”, a database set up by the National Parliament (started by the anti-Kirchner parties) which gave an alternative set of figures to the official and way underestimating INDEC numbers. Then the last two years we can go back to the official INDEC body because though still likely biased towards the sitting government, it’s become fairly reliable. Put those together and this is what you get:

For what it’s worth, the highest peaks in 2013 and 2016 are likely BS, at that time Congress was equally guilty of propaganda as Cristina Kirchner’s people. But the rest of the data, taken as a whole, gives a decent enough snapshot and we see that inflation has revolved around the 25% annual figure for a full decade.

So to the point of this piece, THIS IS TRUE FOR THE MACRI GOVERNMENT AS WELL. It’s unsurprising that your people up North don’t hear about the rampant inflation any longer, what with the biz friendly/FDI friendly/financially orthodox Macri in power. But inflation hasn’t gone away despite the current government making it a linchpin of its macro policy to drive it down. Last year the inflation target of 18% max was roundly beaten. This year the inflation target was set at 15% and with the data just in for the first quarter (+6.7%) and the annual projections of private buffets at 25.2%, we even have Macri saying (16) they want to be “as close to 15% as possible”.

The big problem for us looking on is that inflation targeting is the central point of Macri’s austerity plan. Under CFK wages kept track of inflation, but Macri’s deal with Argentina has been 1) you get wage rises under the rate of inflation 2) this will help bring inflation down 3) in the longer term we’ll all be better off when inflation is low. Due to this, the population as a general entity has take a pay cut in real purchasing power terms and that’s okay for a while, the Macri model can promise jam tomorrow for a while, but patience is already wearing thin and late last year saw the first real and major union-backed national strike protests due to the degradation of the family budgets.

Alamos Gold (AGI.to), guilty of sex discrimination, workplace discrimination and failure to pay worker's participation bonuses in Mexico

According to reports out of Mexico, Alamos Gold (AGI.to) has been ordered to pay an ex-director of Human Resources in Mexico the sum of 47.2m pesos after being found guilty under the country's sex discrimination and worker discrimination laws. What's more the report states that AGI has also been ordered to back-pay the worker participation profits that it has illegally withheld from its Mexico employees since 2008. the total bill would come to around 950m pesos, which is about U$53m.

McCluskey: Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

PS: Isn't a payment of U$53m for breaking country laws a material event? Why do you have to read this on a pissant blog and not from the company itself? Inquiring minds (etc)...

Pretium (PVG): Aaaaaaaaaaand it's gone

Five day chart:

All those early Wednesday phone calls to clients, all that hype, all that sound and fury signifying nothing. Which brings to an end another gratuitous hitpiece post which was, in fact, basically an excuse to get this on the blog again (youtube here):

Angry Geologist does Evrim Resources (EVM.v) $EVM

Right here on this link. Hot stocks get two cents thrown at them from all angles, normal.

Evrim Resources (EVM.v): In praise of Joe Mazumdar and Exploration Insights

I strongly suspect that subscribers of Exploration Insights, the junior/exploration mining company newsletter run by Joe Mazumdar and Brent Cook, are very happy people today. What Joe and Brent understand is that in the very high risk world of their sector, you only need one of your stocks to run like a scalded cat to be a success and when the one that runs is a Top Pick...well, work it out for yourself. Just as one example of the close coverage subscribers to Exploration Insights have enjoyed recently is this line (and as I haven't asked permission, I don't want to publish too much of their subs-only material):

"...this will be a very interesting year for EVM and underpins it as one of our top picks."

Joe wrote that on January 9th, 2018. That's to say, here:

Exploration Insights isn't a cheap newsletter, but that's because it is by far the best on junior mining out there. Bar none. So maybe you should go and check out their website, too (plenty of freestuff there as well). And before you ask, for the record this post is 100% unsolicited, neither Brent nor Joe know I'm writing it and it's done for no type of fee, payment or anything. My benefit is pointing readers of IKN toward quality, that's all.

PS: On a quid pro quo basis, I get Exploration Insights every weekend and they get The IKN Weekly. And I get the better end of the deal.

Zinc One (Z.v) $Z.v: The problem with Elefterios Aligizakis is...

....that the dude has ripped off so many people in the junior world over the years. Not just smallfry either, we are talking about a man who has conned rich and powerful people out of many millions of dollars. So now his sworn enemies with serious cash know that Elefterios Aligizakis, aka Larry The Greek is the main bankroll behind both Zinc One (Z.v) and the den of nefarious pumping known as Future Money Trends, everything and anything that gets reco'd by Daniel 'Davidoff Cigar' Ameduri is going to be shorted to kingdom come and blasted into smithereens. Starting with Z.v, of course:

You have been warned, ladies and gentlemen. Ameduri's gig is well and truly over.

Just in case you're wondering what's happening at Casey Research...

...and the "Big Announcement" they've promised for April 18th, it goes something like this:

1) Louis Lobito Little Wolf James has left the company.

2) They're re-jigging the newsletters previously connected to Lobito.

3) A guy called E.B. Tucker is taking over one part of it. He's been in the Stansberry empire for a while and among other things, used to run a gold fund with the dude who now runs Metalla. Anyway, E.B. Tucker is going to call his part of the gig "Strategic Investor" and it's only going to have about 1/3 of its focus on natural resource stocks. Most of the service is going to be on financial companies and Tucker plans to reco quite a few banks to subscribers. So much for the libertarian rebel angle, hey Dougie?

4) Meanwhile, the junior mining end of affairs at Casey is being handed to Dave Forest, he of Pierce Points (and previously, the Sunward Resources blow-up and that weird platinum junior). The good news for Forest and the Casey subbers is that he's really not that bad at the sector (and of course, he really couldn't do much worse than Lobito).

Anyway, you heard it here first. Have a nice day.

Chart of the day is...

...zinc, 12 month spot, courtesy of Kitco:

After last week's short attack (from Chinese money piling in on open interest futures), Zn has done a pretty good job of bouncing off support. So far at least.

The IKN Weekly, out now

Nasdrovye

IKN465 has just been sent to subscribers. Covers a lot of ground this week.

The top three most visited IKN posts this week are...

...in reverse order:

Third Place: "Seven dead, up to 40 injured in Bolivia mine accident". It ended up as eight dead. This story didn't get much bandwidth in the English language press (too small and brown? not from the right country?) which means the blog took up the slack where real news agencies should have been.

Second Place: "Zinc One (Z.v) $Z.v: Elefterios Aligizakis the main taker of the upcoming placement". This is going to be fun. Larry The Greek is one interestind dude.
 

First Place: "Tinka Resources (TK.v)  hosts a site visit" which was absolutely nothing to do with the 10% price rise in TK last week, oh no.

La Escondida in Chile is the world's largest copper mine

Here's its monthly production chart, year 2000 to date:

It's currently running at just over 100,000 tonnes of copper production per month. Pretty darn cool. By the way, "ENE" stands for "Enero", Spanish for January. Data from the Cochilco site, you see.