“The last time this happened, early investors had an opportunity to make a fortune. Now one team of researchers thinks it’s happening again… with an unusual, little-known mining stock.”
That’s the opening of the latest teaser from Frank Curzio for his Phase 1 Investor newsletter, and it’s not the first time we’ve heard the promise of the “next Royal Gold” — which makes sense, since the royalty business they’re in is still fairly new to the public markets, and it has been so incredibly successful for them as they’ve grown from a weak mining “penny stock” into a near-$100/share royalty collossus over two decades.
The companies that I remember hearing pitched as the “next Royal Gold” over the years have been Virginia Mines (VGQ in Canada, VGMNF on the pink sheets), International Royalty (later bought by Royal Gold), and, more recently, Sandstorm Gold (SAND). And the list of gold royalty companies is a short one, though there are other up-and-coming companies trying to build businesses in this area.
But this time Curzio has something else in mind — I suspect that his Phase 1 is probably still recommending Sandstorm Gold, which is my largest holding and an old favorite around these parts, though it had had 25% drops since he first touted it so he may have been stopped out, but it’s not the one he’s teasing today, and neither is Virginia Mines … so this must be something new.
As is typical of Phase 1 pitches, he says they’ll be having a conference call for subscribers, and as they often do they’ve gotten the CEO of the company to participate in this call, which will take place on October 11, and he shares a few more clues that we’ll use to sniff out the name of the company for you … but first, let’s get his spiel for why you would want to buy the “next Royal Gold.”
“A Way to ‘Cash in’ On Large Mining Discoveries — BEFORE they’re Discovered
“… everyone knows you can make a ridiculous amount of money investing in small mining stocks…
“Throw money into the right exploration company just before it makes a huge discovery, and BAM! Just like that, you can make a killing overnight.
“When Afriore Ltd discovered platinum in South Africa, its share price jumped 1,952%.
“When Silvercorp Metals discovered silver in China, its stock spiked 3,710%.
“The problem is… for every thousand exploration projects underway, maybe one results in a big discovery…
“I don’t know about you, but those odds don’t seem too appealing to me.
“They didn’t seem too appealing to Stan Dempsey either. So he found a way to change the game—to stack the odds in his favor.
“Instead of going ‘all in’ on low-probability exploration projects, Dempsey decided to spread his capital across a variety of projects…
“Here’s one example of what I mean—the ‘deal’ that changed the game for Royal Gold…
“In 1991, Dempsey invested one million dollars with Placer Dome and ECM—two small companies looking for gold in Nevada. These guys needed extra capital to do some drilling in a town called Elko.
“In return, if those guys found any gold, Dempsey would get a percentage of sales.
“As it turned out, the companies struck it rich – a 3 million ounce discovery, known today as the Pipeline complex.
“Royal Gold received a royalty in return for its initial investment—a steady and regular stream of revenue over the life of the mine. In the first year of the agreement, the company’s share price climbed 10,733%.
“When the mine started producing, Dempsey’s company started raking in the cash. Revenues shot up 476% in a single year.
“Royal Gold had become a new type of gold company – it had transformed from an explorer into what’s known as a mining royalty firm.”
So that’s the shorthand for why folks love royalty companies — you get rid of much of the exploration and production risk but get a nice dose of the upside if big discoveries are made, and the royalties and passive income can keep rolling in for decades if large mines are built. I can’t argue with that, and I’ve said over and over that I don’t usually have the stomach (or geology smarts) for investing in junior miners, but I do think royalty firms can be a great way to get exposure to those hard rock commodities.
"reveal" emails? If not,
just click here...
He goes on to shed light on a few other companies that have made it big in the royalty space to make sure we understand that while successful firms such as this are rare, Royal Gold is not the only one — so we hear a bit about the founding of Franco-Nevada (FNV), which actually pioneered this business before Royal Gold really got going, and about Silver Wheaton (SLW), which is by far the largest of the passive/royalty companies (Silver Wheaton was recently teased by Curzio’s colleague Matt Badiali, I wrote about it here if you’re curious).
So … daydreams firmly in place about what you’ll do with your riches once you find the next big royalty company? We’ll move on then — next we get some clues about the specific pick from Curzio:
“We learned this new company has quickly secured six royalty deals in some of the safest and most desirable locations in the world…
“And that some of these deals are on early stage projects that haven’t ramped up to full production yet.
“Why is this a big deal? Well, as we were shown, this company’s cash flow is expected to explode – as mines reach production – making a few investors very rich. Perhaps, most importantly, we also learned why we couldn’t find this company mentioned in any mainstream source for financial information.
“Why? Because the company is still incredibly small, trading for well under a dollar a share.”
OK — so six royalty deals, under a buck a share, no big political risk … some more clues?
Yes, thankfully, Curzio gets into some of the details on those streams, giving us something to feed to the Thinkolator:
“Royal Gold went from a 3-cent penny stock to over $90 per share by signing smart deals with honest and efficient mining operations, with projects in stable countries.
“And that’s exactly what the ‘Next Royal Gold’ has done too.
“For instance, one of their royalty agreements gives them royalties to 35% of the first two and a half years of production of palladium – in one of the highest grade gold, platinum, and palladium deposits in the world. And that’s just one royalty.
“These guys signed another contract with a very successful mining company. I won’t name it here… but this company owns property that could potentially contain well over 2.000 tons of copper.
“Thanks to this royalty agreement, our royalty company is legally entitled to 17.5% of copper from their latest mine, which we estimate – could produce over 1,800 tons the first year alone.
“Even better, in the next 12-24 months, the amount of royalties this small company is going to collect should skyrocket.
“For example, if nearby mines are any indication, this deposit could produce more than 7,000 estimated tons of copper for the life of the mine. That’s a lot of copper – roughly $52 million worth at today’s prices. And it’s just getting started…
“Our small royalty company has signed a contract giving them access to a large portion of this copper for 80 cents a pound for as long as this mine is in operation. So, even if copper jumps to $4.50 or $5 per pound, the Next Royal Gold is entitled to legally buy it from this mine for just 80 cents a pound.
“Best of all, this mine isn’t even producing yet! It’s supposed to be in full production by 2013!
… this company has 30% of its market cap in cash – and zero debt.”
Is that starting to sound a little bit familiar? Yes, I think you’re right — this has the whiff of a company we’ve covered before. But the deals don’t match exactly, so let’s just check to see if there are any more clues first.
Well, we get more chatter about the potential blue skies ahead for this company — with the “conservative estimates” being that it might either become the “next Royal Gold” as a gigantic royalty firm with hundreds of deals, or that it will get bought out at a premium by a growth-thirsty company, either of which obviously sounds quite delightful.
And then we do get one more clue about the management team, when Curzio pitches his conference call:
“Joining us on the call will be the brilliant young CEO of the company.
“Get this: He helped grow his last company from a $300 million firm to $3 billion with gains of well over 2,500%. ”
So that’s enough to give us great confidence in the answer spun out by the Thinkolator: This is Sandstorm Metals & Energy (SND in Canada, STTYF on the pink sheets).
And yes, I own this one, too — though it’s not as large a position as I have in their sister company Sandstorm Gold.
Sandstorm Metals & Energy is taking the same basic business plan as Silver Wheaton and Sandstorm Gold, and applying it to energy and base metals — what they do is called “streaming,” and it basically means that they invest up front for the right to buy a portion of future production at below-market prices, usually in perpetuity … so it’s not that they get a 3% royalty on the copper, it’s that they get the right to buy 10% of the copper for $1 a pound, which means they take a bit of the pricing risk (though they can’t lose money) and they do still guarantee some future cash flow for the miner. (That’s just an example, it’s not one of their deals).
Sandstorm Metals & Energy was spun out of Sandstorm Resources (now Sandstorm Gold) a couple years ago, taking with it a nearly worthless uranium royalty stream on a project that will probably never be developed, and a chunk of cash … but also keeping a shared management team, including CEO Nolan Watson. And make no mistake, Watson is a large part of the appeal of the Sandstorm companies — you’re betting on management acumen when you place a bet on a royalty company, since you need them to make good deals, and he was the CFO when Silver Wheaton became a monster, helping them grow that silver streaming firm to, as teased, $3 billion in market cap before he left to found Sandstorm (and Silver Wheaton has kept growing just fine without him, it’s now a $13 billion company).
And those two deals are close matches to recent ones Sandstorm Metals has made — they have a deal with Donner Metals on their Bracemac-McLeod zinc-copper mine that does indeed get them 17.5% of the copper, and they should be producing in the first quarter of next year (with recent announcements that they’ll ramp up production faster than expected — Donner is actually a junior partner on this mine, too, it is being build and will be operated by giant Xstrata). That’s their crown jewel streaming deal right now, and the one that’s likely to provide good news soonest.
And the other one teased, for Palladium, is an example of how sister Sandstorm Gold is helping them out — SAND made a deal for some of the gold and a large chunk of the platinum from the Serra Pelada mine, and tacked onto it a deal for Sandstorm Metals to get the palladium from that same mine in a smaller deal. The news of that deal really inspired Sandstorm Metals & Energy shareholders, helping to drive the shares up significantly from the doldrums where they hade been resting. (That clue threw me off the scent for a moment, since I don’t think I’ve seen any note to the effect that their interest is limited to 2-1/2 years of palladium production, which would probably be a lousy deal if true, so I expect that’s just an error in the ad).
Though really, it might just have been a sigh of relief that Sandstorm Metals is coming out of their “disaster” period — this has been a weak investment since I bought it, and since I suggested it to the Irregulars a bit too early about a year and a half ago, when it was trading at between 55-60 cents a share. I’ve been in and out of the stock a couple times, taking tax losses, but I do currently own the shares — and I also own some of the warrants, though those strike at 70 cents and only have a couple months to go, so I expect that gamble will end up being a losing one. If Curzio is successful in driving the shares up a bit with his enthusiasm, I’ll certainly sell the warrants if I get a chance (though not, of course, within the next three days, per my trading rules, so we’d need some sustained buying for me to get lucky on that front).
But as I mentioned a couple months ago in updating my thoughts on Sandstorm Metals for the Irregulars, I will continue to hold the shares — the stock is in the dumps because they’re heavily reliant on coal and natural gas deals for their near-term revenue (or lack thereof), and because one of their first large partnership deals is getting crunched because their partner is going through bankruptcy, and at least one other of them is in default on their agreement and awfully close to as bad. There’s a reason that of the six deals Sandstorm Metals has done, Curzio calls out the palladium and copper ones — their oil deal is suffering from delays at their partner and a current funding crisis, the two coal deals have been clobbered by weak coal prices, the natural gas deal has obviously suffered from low nat gas prices and has gotten an extension on their agreement … so we’re left with copper and palladium to shine some light on the future. In fact, one of the coal deals has gotten so ugly, with the bankruptcy, that Sandstorm Metals (though they’ve been honest in their communications with shareholders regarding the problems) no longer covers it as an “active” deal, listing just five deals on their website.
The good news, then, is that even with one disastrous deal and three very weak or delayed ones, the company has some excellent potential for the future on the back of their best deal, the copper one (the palladium deal is brand new, and the mine is still a closed book so we don’t really know what it might produce — we have to have faith in management on that one, which I do). Here’s an excerpt of what I said about the company in my update to paid members in August, when the shares were in an ugly trough before the recent recovery:
“Can we close our look at Sandstorm with some good news? The Donner Metals steaming deal, for the Bracemac Mcleod copper mine that’s operated by Xtrata, seems to be moving along very well — Sandstorm gets 17.5% of the life-of-mine copper produced from this mine at a sliding price that’s well below copper’s current market price (right now they’re obligated to pay 80 cents/pound as long as copper is above $2.75, and it’s around $3.40 right now), and the mine is now going to be expanded faster than expected. And it’s not tiny Donner Metals that’s doing the work or being relied on to finance the project, it’s mining giant Xstrata. This deal is their second biggest, and it generates substantial cash flow — the minimum guaranteed cash flow is for $5.7 million in 2013, with similar amounts for the next three years after that, but it’s likely to generate far more. If the mine produces the 3,000 tonnes per day that are expected, then the potential is there for many, many times that cash flow — the deposit reserves note that the deposit is 1.26% copper, so that would mean between 35-40 tonnes of copper per day. I’ll call it 35 tonnes to be conservative. 35 tonnes is about 77,000 pounds, and Sandstorm gets 17.5% of it … so about 13,500 pounds. they will pay $10,800 for that copper (80 cents/pound) and sell it for, let’s guess the price 20% below current prices and call it $2.75/pound, so they’ll get about $37,000/day for a net of about $27,000/day in cash flow to Sandstorm. Assume they can keep production up at this level for 300 days a year (also conservative, I think), and you can turn that speculating into just shy of $10 million in annual revenue to Sandstorm. They say they have reserves to provide a mine life of four years, and they should continue to expand reserves as they develop, so as long as copper doesn’t go through the floor they ought to do just fine with this deal, generating anywhere between $5-10 million per year starting in 2013 would go a long way to making up for significant weakness at Sandstorm’s other assets.
“At the corporate level they’ve been burning through anywhere between $1.5-$2.5 million in cash per year, so call it $2 million and assume that the other streams generate no revenue in 2013 (they will probably generate some, though there also may be writedowns) but that Donner produces roughly as I sketched out above, and you’d have a company with a market cap of $100 million, cash of $33 million (so net enterprise value of $67 million), and earnings of $8 million ($10 million from Donner minus $2 million in overhead), roughly 8.5X projected earnings if you back out the cash. That’s obviously a sketchy valuation, and the fact that they’ve had four of their five significant deals run into dramatic amounts of trouble is very unpleasant, but at this point the call on Sandstorm Metals is basically a speculation first on copper and Xtrata’s performance at the Bracemac-Mcleod mine, and second on the potential that at least one of their other deals — Thunderbird Energy, Terrex, or NovaDx, – will recover and start generating revenue over the next two years. They have a lot of obligations on hand from those firms, but all three are either in default or in significant danger of defaulting on those agreements — they are real assets, but there’s also no guarantee that Sandstorm will recoup any healthy percentage of their initial investment in any of these projects.
“… the current valuation and the current assets, with the Xstrata/Donner project looking more valuable and everything else looking less valuable, make the current $100 million valuation for the company seem reasonable. It’s not a bargain unless you have some insight into recovery at Thunderbird, Terrex or NovaDX, but it’s arguably reasonable, which is enough for me to hold and see what CEO Nolan Watson can do now that he has this nasty year under his belt.”
The market cap is now closer to $140 million after the recovery, which is partly due to optimism over the palladium deal and largely due to increased visibility on the copper deal, I expect, though if Curzio suggested this to his existing subscribers a couple weeks ago that could also have provided a near-term bump for the share price. Still not cheap, and their three existing “weak” deals are still in what I would describe as disaster mode — Terrex has hope that they’ll find a buyer or backer to shore up their enhanced oil recovery projects, but they also have received their official default notice from Sandstorm and the share price is collapsing; Thunderbird has made a bit of progress on their delayed gas projects; and Sandstorm is still helping NovaDX with their restructuring, none of them are likely to be making Sandstorm Metals & Energy shareholders particularly happy over the next few months … but expectations are also extremely low, and you can still make a reasonable valuation argument based on the residual value of these three nasty deals, their cash on hand, and the great potential of the Bracemac-McLeod copper stream … as long as you’re willing to give management a head of steam and let them work through those broken deals and, as they’ve done recently with palladium, make new deals with what we hope will be more financially stable partners.
I still have much more affection for Sandstorm Gold than I do for its weaker sister, not surprisingly — since we all do love our extremely successful picks more than our weaker ones — but you can certainly make a case that this is a relatively low-downside investment if you believe that the bull run in commodities will continue over the next decade … and if coal or natural gas prices improve substantially, or copper spikes in price, it might be that they’ll “surprise to the upside” even within the next year or so. So my opinion hasn’t changed on Sandstorm Metals, and I’m still holding the shares and think there’s a possible scenario for very good returns over the long term — but whether or not it becomes the “next Royal Gold,” well, that I don’t know.
Great success will depend on surviving the four very weak streaming deals they’ve made (well, not weak deals but weak partners, to be fair), ideally helping those companies to recover and start producing, and building on the one very successful-looking deal with future deals that they make out of their cash pile and their future cash flow … but given the relatively low incoming cash flow over the next twelve months and their need to keep some buffer to protect the share price from those clobbered deals, I’d guess that it’s not going to be rapid growth unless they can capitalize on Sandstorm Gold’s halo to raise a lot of money in the next year to make bigger deals to replace their sagging ones.
But that’s just what I think — it’s your money you’re investing, so it’s your call to make … whaddya think?
Travis:
Thank you for the Sandstorm Gold recommendation. Just sold a portion yesterday. I listened to their last earnings call and someone questioned Nolan Watson on his sale of Sandstorm Gold. He said he used the proceeds to invest in Sandstom Metals and Energy. That was enough for me to take a position in Metals and Energy last month and I have been very well rewarded.
Thank you for all of you hard work and keep the Thinkolater well oiled.
Frank, a very happy irregular
Frank,
Nolan stated that he sold SSL for SND due merely to the fact that he needed to rebalance his stakes more equitably, so that SND shareholders could see his commitment to both entities. He didn’t sell SSL because SND was a better deal. It may be WAYYYY down the road, but not even close now.
I was just reminicsing with my son a few days ago about our “discovery” of Sandstorm Gold at a Trade Show, probably 3 years ago and our favourable impression of Nolan Watson, given that we were both already invested in Silver Wheaton, so it is a long term holding and my son early on pegged it as “his retirement stock” and holds much more than I do. Based on the “Donner deal” which is also a long time and like the others, a free trading stock in my portfolio of about 200, I recently ADDED to my Sandstorm Metals and Energy holding anticipating a price rise given their beaten down position. Not always the case, but I felt this one had hit bottom and it was time to buy. While the clues seem to fit recently well, there is another small company that is also embarking on the royalty model which I will have to do some digging to find again. Not saying Travis is wrong on this one, but I do have some reservations in that Frank describes it as “well hidden and unknown” and to me at least that does not describe Sandstorm as a known offshoot of an existing royalty company that has achieved some prominence in the past few years.
Thanks Myron — the clues pointed very specifically to Nolan and SND so I’m sure there’s a match, I’ve found that with these teasers you should never weight the squishy, subjective comments (“well hidden and unknown”) very heavily against the specific clues ($3 billion SLW when Watson left, 35% palladium, 17.5% copper deal, etc.) … and outside a pretty select circle of resource investors, the Sandstorm Metals name is still quite unknown, even if Sandstorm Gold has gotten a lot of attention (including Nolan Watson’s CNBC interview w/Jim Cramer) since the NY listing.
That said, there are plenty of folks who saw the success of Silver Wheaton, Franco-Nevada, Royal Gold and now Sandstorm Gold and have been trying to build similar businesses, I’d say none has hit critical mass yet (that I’ve seen) but they are, of course, cheaper before they hit critical mass.
Maybe he’s talking about Soltoro Mining (SLTOF). They are rather small and unheard of, but they have a couple of streaming deals lined up.
May be interesting for other reasons, but not a match here — Soltoro is a gold and silver explorer who has optioned a couple Mexican properties to miners in exchange for potential future royalties, which can be a way to build a royalty portfolio (that’s what Altius is doing to some degree up in the maritime provinces, too) but it’s very early, and not at all involved with copper or palladium.
Thanks Travis.
Doh! I guessed Sandstorm before I read the article. Cramer touted Sandstorm on CNBC two days ago. Going by what I see of him on youtube, the young president looks very clean, honest and hi-IQ
http://video.cnbc.com/gallery/?video=3000120536 Cramer interviewing Nolan Watson 3 days ago. Cramer is erratic but when he likes something people at least take a look
TRAVIS You are the man!!! I just got done reading the tease by Frank Curzio and have been a long time holder of Royal Gold and Silver Wheaton. Just popped over to the Irregulars page to see if by chance anyone had done any work on it…and there is YOUR whole article breaking down Sandstorm Metals.. I cannot say it enough “great job” that you do for small investors. Stay safe and keep up the fantatic work……..THANKS
I second Gerry’s closing remark … though I think he meant the compliment to say “fantastic” not “fanatic”, er ah, “fantatic”
Feedback as requested: my story on Sandstorm Metals — bought Dec ’12 Warrants some time back when you covered this initially; down 91.68%.
WTS SANDSTORM METALS & ENERGY LTD EXP 12/23/2012
Symbol, Quantity Average Cost Market Price Book Value Market Value Change $ Change %
SND.WT 14,000 0.1803 0.015 2,524.11 210.00 -2,314.11 -91.68
Be cautious of warrants.
Indeed, especially when expiration. Is relatively near and they’re out of the money. A mediocre or bad pick can turn horrific if you use a leveraged derivative like a warrant. My warrant position is in a similar state for SND.
It seems that these stocks are always being pumped after they have a catalyst push the POS higher. I own Sandstorm Metals as well, it will be a while until it reaches the level of Sandstorm Gold. It is unique in that it is probably the only royalty company with this business model. Could be a home run or a strike out, but Nolan has an established track record of success.
As long as we don’t suffer a depression if we fall off that “fiscal cliff” on 01/01/13, commodities like copper & palladium, plus the others mentioned will have many years of growth & demand to look forward to. As long as the mgmt. hasn’t lost their touch in developing a decent royalty company this Sandstorm spin-off has great potential.
Just remember to buy low, what c/b simpler?
Travis, since Donner seems to be a large part of the analysis for Sandstorm Metals, I wonder what you think of Donner itself? It is back down to 19 cents, despite imminent production, no risk of not meeting their commitments with Xstrata, and additional exploration potential. It’s a junior with very little risk, but price has not gone up as I expected. Any ideas why? Les
Can anyone tell me if it’s generally better to hold these type streaming or royalty stocks in an IRA versus regular taxable account? I’m fairly new at this investing game and would appreciate any words of wisdom or experience on which way to go.
Allie, I have Sandstorm Gold in both an IRA account and a regular account. The only thing that is important is to get into SAND ASAP during this pull back in October.
Thanks Travis for all the good work you do. I am new to all this speculative investing on Jr miners but this latest tease from Frank Curzio caught my eyes as well. I did a little research and I thought he might be teasing Gold Royalties Corp (GRO). I tried to buy it today but it had already jump 20% from it’s closing yesterday. I would be interesting to know if you have heard about GRO and what you think about it.
Thanks again for enlightening many of us ‘newbies’.
GRO is an interesting little teensy one — much more like an early Royal Gold in that they’ve got traditional royalties instead of streaming deals, though I have no idea if they’ll get as lucky/smart as RGLD was in getting a few royalties on what turned out to be monster discoveries. Definitely not a match for Curzio’s tease, which I’m quite sure we’re right about being SND.V, but it might be an interesting one to keep an eye on to see if their royalty assets are likely to be any good. They are extraordinarily tiny and not generating any cash flow yet, so I presume that none of their royalties are producing but I have no idea when they might — looks like the market cap is less than $20 million, so the assumption would be that they have very small royalties on very small or extremely early exploration projects, but I haven’t actually looked at their assets. Wouldn’t surprise me if the recent price bump was inspired by self-promotion since it seems likely they’ll have to raise money to grow their portfolio, but I haven’t actually seen any promos — and it looks like they had a share split recently for some reason, not sure why since turning a $2-3 stock into a penny stock doesn’t make much sense. Do note that when you have a stock with a market cap of just $16 million as GRO appears to be, a well-timed sneeze can make it jump by 20%.
The streaming companies tend to come in later, funding mine development on proven deposits — royalty investors often come in earlier, funding exploration or receiving royalties in exchange for early staking or prospecting. That’s not always true, but those tendencies seem to prevail.
Thanks for the info Travis and for making aware of just how small GRO is.
There is one more bit of info that I didn’t mention earlier but to me might be
significant and that is the GRO has entered into some sort of partnership with Franco-Nevada. Here is portion of that annoucement …..
” Gold Royalties Corporation (“Gold Royalties”) (TSX VENTURE:GRO) is pleased to announce that it has entered into a royalty acquisition partnership with Franco-Nevada Corporation (“Franco-Nevada”)(TSX:FNV)(NYSE:FNV), an arms-length party.
Under the terms of the agreement, Gold Royalties has provided Franco-Nevada a participation right to acquire, at the time of purchase, a 50% asset-level ownership position in any future royalty transaction which Gold Royalties has a signed letter of intent or binding agreement to acquire. The royalty acquisition partnership shall currently apply to any new net smelter return, net profits interest or metal stream royalty acquisition where the total consideration paid for the royalty is up to CDN$15,000,000.
“Franco-Nevada is looking forward to working with Gold Royalties Corporation. Our recent focus has been on large royalty and stream transactions. Yet our biggest wins have been from discoveries made at some of our smallest investments. This partnership with Gold Royalties provides Franco-Nevada with a window to smaller opportunities with high optionality,” stated David Harquail, President and CEO of Franco-Nevada.
Interesting, sounds like Franco-Nevada gets a tiny little farm team to sniff out prospects that wouldn’t normally be large enough to catch their attention. What does GRO get out of it, other than a potential funding partner?
Well, I came up with a different one. This one explicitly has 6 royalties working, it’s about to change its name with the word “Royalty” in it, and it’s under $1.0 and trades on the Toronto Exchange. I haven’t seen anyone come up with this name – how about Bridgepoint Ventures, soon to be Premier Royalty. They are buying Premier Gold Mine’s wholly owned subsidiary. And check out this site: http://mineninvestor.com/.
What do you think of this one?
I’ve been sniffing around this one for a few weeks, too — it’s not the solution to Curzio’s tease, but it is a gold royalty company (traditional NSR royalties, not streaming deals) that’s trying to step up growth, with several producing royalties. Quite small, looks like it could be in the neighborhood of $100 million after the reverse merger closes this quarter (assuming shareholder approval), based on the fact that Bridgepoint is about a $29 million comopany and they’ll end up with 26% of the combined company, and they do have revenue, so that’s something.
I haven’t read the actual filings yet or tried to estimate what their royalty revenue will be like, which will be key to figuring out whether the valuation is reasonable, if you want their pitch you can see it in this presentation from August: http://www.bridgeportventures.net/docs/merger/2012-08-20_Premier_Royalty_Corporation.pdf — right now their projections are for royalty cash flow of about $8 million next year, which certainly could be reasonable for a $100 million company if their debt and other expenses are manageable (I haven’t checked). They have growth projected from this year to next year in those royalties, with the key ones being in the Carlin Trend and in South Africa, but the numbers are fairly flat to declining after that, which will be something to watch — they presented the quick details here: http://www.bridgeportventures.net/docs/merger/2012-10-02_Premier_Royalty_Asset_Summary.pdf
Travis, I appreciate all of the work you do, digging to the bottom of each story to separate the good from the bad. I was intrigued by STTYF and went to purchase a small amount, but my broker, Options House, told me that it is a foreign stock and they are no longer able to trade it. Has anyone else had this problem?
Sounds like you have an illiterate broker. STTYF is clearly a US pink sheet
listing. It is listed on the pink sheets so US investors can easily buy it
without going threw a Canadian exchange. Open an online account,
with another broker, and you can do it yourself.
Travis,
Great job sniffing this one out and it sure beats paying $5,000.00 per year to get the info! Please, can you also look into Greg McCoach’s 5 Billion Silver Find Stock (In Peru)? Thanks!
William Davis
Bill, I assume you are not the former Premier of Ontario, but if you are we have met. The stock you are asking about (McCoach silver company in Peru) is TINKA Resources TK-V, FSE/TLD, TKRFF/OTC/PK with an alleged resource of 20M oz. silver, and yes I am a shareholder.
I suspect the royalty company I was thinking about is indeed Bridgeport/Premier and no I had not checked the clues to see whether it fit when commenting previously. In respect to GRO, Travis asks “what the benefit might be of the alliance with Franco-Nevada” other than as a potential funding partner. My response would be, isn’t that enough? Besides, for a junior so small just getting a piece of the action could be highly profitable and maybe the idea is that just as junior explorers do more “finding” than the majors, potential royalty streams that are simply too BIG for GRO to finance immediately could be taken up by Franco-Nevada on a revenue sharing basis. IF a success story like F/N has enough interest to seek an alliance then it increases confidence it is a worthy investment to consider.
While I still have more “due diligence” to do I may just end up taking a small stake in BOTH of these juniors as that is where I seem to make the most money, the point being that once the “RISK” has supposedly been removed, most of the money has already been made. I have consistently doubled my money or better on stocks under .50, the key is doing enough research to verify credentials of management, viability of resource or at least high probability of expansion, plus adequate financing for at least a years burn rate. If the company does not produce positive results and has to go back to the well for financing repeatedly without solid advancement in drill results then it is time to get out.
can’t help wondering if Mr Curzio owns some warrants which expire in december at 70 cents – could be a push so they don’t expire worthless (CV this comment based on minimal research)
Not sure this is the right moment to jump in according to the recent spikes in a couple of days……
For what it’s worth, I did sell my warrants (they’re still far out of the money) once the three-day window on my trading closed after I published this article. Lost money on them, of course, but I certainly don’t think SND will rise above 70 cents in the next two months so I was pleased to sell them for more than zero cents. Not a lot more, of course, but a little money is better than no money.
I still hold the common and don’t foresee selling that anytime soon, even with the recent spike in the price — I’ll be waiting to see how this story plays out for the stock, since I think with time they’ll work through several of their bad investments … but with only two months left ’til warrant expiration there’s no time for patient watching on those (though if you think that the stock will rise by 50% in the next 60 days you may think the warrants are an exciting speculation — I sold when they were bouncing between a penny and 1.5 cents and I bet you’ll have plenty of opportunity to buy them at that price if you want to … if you do spin the wheel on those, feel free to come back and let me know if that gamble works out for you so I can feel guilty for missing the boat).
So the big announcement happened, right? Do we have a followup? Was it pegged correctly? Haven’t noticed a jump in the Sandstorm…the pr didn’t take or it was a different stock?
It was a conference call, the idea and writeup had already been shared with subscribers. I’m sure it was SND.V,but don’t know what the specific advice or call content was (ie, could have been “buy up to 45 cents”, which would suppress some of the possible move). Further advances from Curzio’s rec might require them to keep teasing it or re-recommending it — the stock did bump up a bit on the 11th, the day of the call, but not by very much — it had climbed a lot already. I suspect I’ll have to be patient with this one, given the info I noted above.
Since I wrote an article suggesting Terrex as an investment last January, I naturally feel bad about that. TER changed management earlier this year and their first presentation was a bit unrealistic. They were planning on raising $25 million to advance their EOR properties. After a few months their plans became more realistic, raising $5 million for some cheaper improvements. Despite this reassessment I hold little hope for a deal. I did underestimate the difficulty TER would have raising money.
Sand has a few cards that have not been shown on the energy end, the shinny yellow stuff always gets the bobsledders bringing back those old movies when he gets his rocks off in town and then takes his Ship back to the US SUCH A GOOD ENDING AND THE LEADER 1/2 HUSKY BECOMES THE WHITE FANG. Sorry i was having a fun novel approach, back to basic if one was to get in back when sttyf fell down to the mid 20’s that is cents by the way and listen to Denver say that was there real long term play one would question what phy. shink was worth that 100$ per hour to get the crystal ball hand reading link, but have played cards on bluffing hands, short story gets longer by a long young investing Watson friend and several nice calls hows the sun shining chat, I guess in house investors have a format. So at the little fall to the mid twenty’s cents .27 I said what the hell and through a few grand after a couple of late night dreams after the thrill is gone and we talked on occasion no faces just a name and a voice but a nice young man ad he was right STTYF HIT .49 AND I DUMPED HALF SO I WAS ON HIS CLOCK THEN but yet still COURTEOUS and took my calls from Oklahoma you know how are the fish biting that sort of meaning nothing but looking for a key word hell anyway I was more than even after I sold my little half Polatics is a funny permit game crossing borders I mean 6 or 7 year to get a US permit and around 2 or so in Canada but that was the yellow bar shinning stuff there has to be a punch line. Several how is the weather calls and the gas or fuel or liquid fuel has a place, even though they play in WYO and UTAH there is a catch some where I am in OK RED DIRT CUSHING LAND. but this little wise man knows the Alberta plays big and small and we have a President who is not but acts like nat gas is the way, which brings the Keystone and China to play especially when he says the Keystone will create to many jobs how about that no more Keystone But it will come and Watson and his geo man can by and hold not like the have to pdoduce precius metals right away , the cash flow thing which was good for Sand till BRI but that was coming any way. Back to STTYF some mineral land owners have been bit before so lets just say he locks up some long term mineral rights play cheap but still good for the land owner now Sand has cash and wants some USA TO MIX WITH ALBERTA ON THE WAY TO CUSHING TO HOUSTON THE ENBRIDGE AND EPD WILL COME SOONER OR LATTER, and they have cash and now the have mineral rights tied up dam brilliant for a long cheep time play. There are Farms in KS, OK, COLO, WHY, AND EVEN TX. waiting for the new price tag play and the Alberta GEO Sand man knows things flow south or they cross land to a ship for Asia which makes some tribal burial grounds untouchable they will not relocate like service master funeral boys do. But anyway this is two to three year money till DC say Okay and it will be interesting how much wheat and corn etc. land does not need as much seeds for planting any more . laugh all you want but the mom and pop land mineral old money are getting more that they usually would and they get to keep there land. Best part is what Nolan is known for not getting you hands dirty or a hands off streamer if producing shows in the due diligence. Well I am a shake the dice VEGAS THROW THE BONES CRAP PLAYER AND ALWAYS BET WITH THE HOUSE CASE EVENTUALLY THEY ALWAYS GET THERE (PROFIT) pretty long history lesson going on here but Nolan’s hands will still be clean because the big big land grabbers will have to go through him to get to the farmers mineral rights paper. He will always do good in mining but the 2 to 3 year money black gold or nat cas or liquid gas will have a new stamp on it, ask Mr. Spott if there is a energy question because his South America Govt. are going to want more and if they do not get it they will take it. West of the MISSISSIPPI and EAST of the Sierra’s has a whole new game but it is a year or two away SFFTF is the quiet hand cleaner that all the drillers will need. Just look at WESTSTATE they are not buying up auction land to make a zoo for the tree huggers. 500$ will get you 10 acres and you just renew the taxes every year sate is a dollar an acre fed is 5 dollar an acre I would by a section and just wait and you can probably get a nice low tax grant loan and when the candles need light you will get a real stream. It is kind of funny because Obama is making the US NAVY BUY THERE FUEL FROM TYSON FOODS and SYNTROLEUM RIGHT NOW and refining it in la. at Mansfield A Billion dollar private company right now for 6 times the price of a gallon right now . EXECUTIVE ORDER TYSON FOODS AND SYNTROLEUM AND MANSFIELD are all owned by DYNAMIC FUELS WHO HAS THE NAVY CONTRACT WHO BY THE WAY IS THE BIGGEST FUEL USER IN THE WORLD. The best part is the minority rule TYSON FOODS is a multi billion dollar public traded company and Mansfield is a billion dollar private you can not trade company AND SYNTROLEUM is a public traded company for about .70 cent and the US NAVY CAN NOT GET FUEL AT 6 TIMES THE PRICE OF A GALLON THEY HAVE TO USE THERE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION RIPP OFF ACORN FUEL. HE FORGOT TO BRING THAT UP ABOUT THE KEYSTONE EVEN THOUGH HE WAS JUST DOWN THE ROAD WHEN HE GAVE HIS KEYSTONE NO GO SPEECH, IDO NOT EXPECT YOU TO BELIEVE ME SO JUST GOOGLE DYNAMIC FUELS YOU MIGHT GE T A FREE ROOM AT THE WHITE HOUSE AND PAY LIKE THE NAVY 25 DOLLARS A GALLON TO DRIVE THERE, BUY DON’T WORRY HE IS CUTTING PERSONAL AND BUDGETS FOR THE VETS just google that executive order! This is no wieki leaks this is PRnewswire! Kind of makes Solindra small and that was only 500,000 bilion bankrupt that went to China. It gets deeper but it is Bushes fault that will be the affirmative action excuse from AL SHARPTON who does not talk to his long time church follower but there are dinidends to be made what ever political side you are on how about lets just tell the truth Party like our forefathers ABE WAS A DEMOCRAT BUT IT DID NOT MATTER THERE WAS ALWAYS A RIGHT OR WRONG NO GREY AREA! STRAIGHT FROM A PROFESSOR WHO TEACHES AND YOU HAVE TO PASS THE TEST 70% OF YOUR GRADE RELIES ON THE ANSWERS AND YOUR FINAL TAKE ON ECONOMICS, YOU WILL NEVER GUESS THE CLASS OR SHOULD I SAY HARD TO GET INTO TO LEARN FROM THE TRUTH INSTITUTION. Manny a PRESIDENT HAD THE SAME SEAT,BUT NOW IT IS THE MORE THE MEDIA THAT OUGHT TO HEP THE COLLEGE BRAINS RIGHT OF THE BAT. GLASS HALF EMPTY?
The author of this article could have saved every reader time if he didn’t repeat and rephrase every point he makes.