simms45
15 May 2018
Results Update It is good to see from the updated results that they have both reduced costs for the last 3 months but more importantly that Condor have held follow on meetings on May 2nd, 2018,with the Inter-Institutional Committee, 2 weeks after all the troubles started. This is relatively good news as it appears everything is continnuing and on track."at the offices of the Ministry of Energy and Natural Resources to discuss additional information required by the Inter-Institutional Committee following their site visit inspection on March 13th, 2018. The Company intends to submit the technical information by May 31st, 2018."If they complete submission by the end of the month then we can hope these are the final questions and that Condor can satisfy them. Mark Child in the opening remarks is confident so while he has not divulged what these questions relate to it does show he is confident with that information that they can answer them completely.
Dictum de dicto
30 Apr 2018
Business as usual I hear that the unrest is not affecting the permit process. If anything, the Nicaraguans may want to expedite matters.If this is indeed the case then don't be surprised if we see it reflected in Condor's price over the next day or two. We might even see the other side of 50p again by Friday.
Dictum de dicto
30 Apr 2018
Re: Buyers returning I checked for news this morning and it does look like things are starting to settle down. They seemed to have agreed to establish a 'Truth Commission' to investigate the casualties of the unrest last week, which I read as progress.B2B Gold is of course producing in El Limon and La Libertad. I doubt if either side want to stop the tax dollars coming in so I wouldn't have expected anything more than a 'flash-in-the-pan' move for B2B. It's also producing outside of Nicaragua as well which would dampen any moves. Still, it's good to see that shareholders there don't see the politics having much of an effect. I think you are right on the permit decision being pushed back a few weeks though. Prior to the unrest I would have said the window on granting had already opened up, although now I'm guessing June rather than May. We'll see. It could be that all stops are pulled to get the Nicaraguan economy moving. The relaxation of those pension reforms are not going to pay for themselves.Looks like a few dip buyers are coming in. If it keeps up we could see it back over 50p in the next couple of weeks.
simms45
29 Apr 2018
Re: Buyers unreturning When you look at B2Gold, that is exposed to Nicaragua, they are up 5% on the week so this has certainly not impacted into the other main players in Nicaragua who are up and processing gold, although they have a spread of mines elsewhere. Sadly for Mark Child, who in my view has blown the last few years wasting time on submitting permit plans that were not going to fly, and only recently submitted one that looks to tick all the right boxes he now finds himself caught up in potential permit delay. i was not expecting permits to be released before June but the question is of course how the current situation will potentially impact that or not. Certainly for the government to find the funds to keep the pension reforms as they are they are going to need to plug the gap so you should think the government might look through the order book and try and bring forward some potential tax raising projects as they are going to need it. Certainly the people in Nicaragua are also going to want to raise income so in some way the government and people of Nicaragua will probably agree that neither of them want to pay for the pensions themselves so looking to foreign inward investment and projects to bring in some cash should come to the fore. The $120m injection needed to get this processing plant up and then the 10s of millions in taxes they would get when Mark gets his 100k baseline gold operation moving is most definitely one of the clearest ways Nicaragua can move forward. Therefore i think projects of this kind will get more focus so Ortega can go to his people and show how he can deliver and that the people do not need to pay any more.However the next 2-3 weeks of wrangling and reconciliation will decide how quickly that might come but it looks the landscape of the uprising is also looking at a peaceful exit as there has been little real violence over the last week. Certainly the price of Condor is at very low levels, almost 20p of the current price is the value of the built up tax losses but sitting on billions of gold is not quite the same as having a permit to dig it up. while i think this stock will be volatile i am still inclined to think come end of June this could have been a very good time to have topped up.
shugg1e
27 Apr 2018
New lows Not good but fundamentals outweigh risks so its good here for 10000
Dictum de dicto
27 Apr 2018
Re: Buyers unreturning As originally expected, it looks like writing off this week was the right call. Buying has been too weak to allay the drip, drip of small sells. I'm not really seeing anything new but the somewhat delayed reporting by the FT and other mainstream news organisations is probably not helping.Clamber through the doomsday rhetoric and it does look like there are some positives on the Nicaraguan front. From what I can see:- Ortega has conceded on early elections.- Catholic Church has apparently been asked to mediate.- Ortega has ordered dozens of the 200 protesters who were arrested during the clashes to be released, and lifted broadcasting curbs his government imposed on independent media.[link] corruption has been alleged but it's really about social conditions and jobs. I just hope that we end up with a programme to promote mining.
Dictum de dicto
25 Apr 2018
Buyers returning I thought that we might see buyers coming back in next week but it looks like we already have interest returning. Again, it comes down to how you see the situation. Will it delay the granting of permits or expedite them? My sense is that the Nicaraguan people want to see concrete actions rather than talk so I err on the latter proposition. Still, you can never really tell. It wouldn't be the first time that politicians have been caught in that 'deer in headlights' moment (i.e. paralysis for fear of doing something wrong). Nothing likely this week but I suspect that the permit window will reopen a week from now.
Dictum de dicto
24 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves Agreed - see my other post.I reckon that quite a few of those who sold yesterday will leave it a few days, until the dust settles, and probably come back in next week. Based on yesterday's move the upside potential could be a lot greater than the downside. If riots only produce an 8p drop what will the permits and the prospect of a takeover deliver? I know someone who sold half his holding yesterday but doesn't want to risk losing the potential upside on the other half. This could be a situation familiar to a few people.
Dictum de dicto
24 Apr 2018
Re: Permits? Yesterday's price move was obviously unrelated to Condor's situation with respect to the permits. It clearly looked more like a knee-jerk and it many respects it's not difficult to rationalise a move in th eopposite direction. Think about it.Assuming that the move was entirely based on perceptions of the Nicaraguan situation (i.e. not the fact the PoG slipped back last week), then I guess we have two camps.Camp AThe sky is falling; It's Venezuela mark II; The Nicaraguan government will be totally focused on allaying discontent in the country and won't be interested in anything else.Camp BThe sky is falling; It's Venezuela mark II; The Nicaraguan government will be totally focused on allaying discontent in the country and will need to pull its finger out and do something.Pension changes were the catalyst for the violence but the underlying cause is poverty, which of course is related to low GDP. At 'people level' this translates into a lack of well paid jobs. The government obviously wants to save money on running its social care system, pensions included, so it needs to promote industry. When you are in that situation do you:1) Yap Yap Yap but not actually delivery anything (the usual political response)?2) Do something. Like, for example, grant permits to miners across the country? In other words create a bit of positive PR about creating jobs.In 'normal' times politicians prefer to yap but when there are riots on the street even they can't get away with dithering. They must actually act.My argument, therefore, is that this might actually expedite the granting of permits rather than add further delay. The Nicaraguan government desperately needs some positivity or I've no doubt it will fall sooner rather than later. As for Condor, I'm sure that enquiries will be made over the next few days and we might even see an RNS. Whether it would say 'no change to the situation' or 'permits are expected to be delayed another six months' remains to be seen. I guess we will have to see.As you no doubt have guessed I see this as a hold situation. It's a frustrating distraction but I tend to think it will blow over in a week or two. We might yet see the permits come through by June.
simms45
24 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves I think the Condor investors got fright yesterday but doing some research today or Twitter/Facebook violence has largely stopped and wider reading Daniel Ortega only recently got re-elected with 72% of the vote so he is hardly unpopular in grand scheme of things. i think with the reversal of the social security changes he wanted to make will probably mean this will probably blow over. We will see but probably a good bloody nose for Daniel Ortega to listen more.He will probably now need to focus on increasing government revenue and one of the good ways of doing that is increasing direct inward investment and signing off permits to gold producers so i suspect this should be positive.It is interesting as Danial Ortega is very left wing and his social policy is very much to improve the rights of poor people so we will see but i think from what i have read this is unlikely to spiral further as his last election was far better than before and he has been around a good time now. My other interest in this company is that compared to B2Gold, that is the major gold miner in Nicaragua, and worth $3.6bn based on around a 800,000 ounze per year output. It is not hard to see that if Mark Child can hit 100,000 ounzes and then 200,000 ounzes at both a higher grade than B2Gold and at lower cost of extraction then assuming all that is hit this will make our current $50m (80 times less than B2Gold) look quite small. There is also a huge tax loss Condor is sitting on that is worth £15m alone so that is also a nice buffer. Interesting times but the price hit 43p for a very short period and is now back to 46p so we will see as if the violence subsides and based on the limited impact to any other Nicaraguan business this is probably less problematic. we will see however.
Dictum de dicto
23 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves I think you may be right. Probably speculation that the government will be distracted with other things although I’m not sure if the world works like that. Looks like a panic reaction.We’ll see how long it takes to settle down.
simms45
23 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves i think the answer might be to do with the trouble in Nicaragua but today so far we have had the most volume for sometime.[link] sells are low level but steady so i am not sure it indicates someone knows something about the permits that is not in the public domain, more perhaps a sell day on the stability on Nicaragua.Hopefully both of the above is not the case but it is odd that we have had 300k volume early on monday.Hopefully that will be resolved and understand the government of Nicaragua have backed down on their reforms but underlines that Nicaragua is not quite as stable as perhaps everyone would like so there is a risk added into the price.Hopefully it will spur the government to sign off the permits quicker as the creation of jobs and revenue for the government is sorely needed.
Dictum de dicto
23 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves I started looking -in on Condor on a daily basis a couple of weeks ago, expecting an announcement on the permits to come through at any time. Today's opening price was therefore, at least initially, a bit of a surprise ,although when you look at the situation it's not that hard to come up with some reasons.1) A $20+ drop in the USD price of gold on Thursday/Friday last week. I suspect that this was a short term influence.2) Illiquidity in the shares. The market makers are no doubt chalking this up as a success as the lower price has perked up volumes (a little). Late afternoon trades would have had a bearing as well. 3) It remains very difficult to put a timeline on the permissions. We are on Central American time on this one which could mean tomorrow or June. Who knows?Whatever the case, we are still where we were last week, albeit with a lower price and perhaps a little more frustration and, for some, less patience. I still think the permits could land any day and will remain steadfast on it.
Dictum de dicto
18 Apr 2018
Re: Tiny volumes = large moves Agreed, to a degree, although I'm not sensing anything like a stampede to get in before the permits are issued. My guess is that it is still the 'speculative punt' crowd rather than the day trade tribe. We may see a few more given the price revival over the past week or two but I reckon that a lot of people are still wary of gold juniors. I still think it's taking tiny volumes to significantly move the price. Volume at 133,000 today for example and a 3p upward move.
Dictum de dicto
18 Apr 2018
Back to 2010? I'm starting to feel like we are back in early to mid-2010. Gold is hovering arounf $1350 and looks like it might be getting ready for a leap, and some of the gold stocks are starting to show some signs of life. Newmont, for example, is up a third vs. a year ago and the pattern is similar elsewhere:[link] big ones have been less exciting over that time period but most seem to have shown signs of upward momentum over the past month.I think something may be afoot, not just with Condor but with the sector as a whole. 2010 was insane towards the end but the way it started off gave little away in terms of clues about how it would end. Could we be in for a repeat performance? It is after all eight years, plenty enough time for base building. Interestingly, Condor was around 10p in August 2010 (equivalent money terms) and by early December was around 215p. It was a mad time, but boy was it fun to watch. It's happened once and could happen again, only this time we will have something solid behind us.
