SIRF has recently come out with two articles on Fraser Perring’s charlatanism [1,2]. (I have previously written about Perring’s Viceroy Research here and here.) While I am strongly of the opinion that Perring is a charlatan, I question the attacks on Perring’s history as a social worker. Many people who attack Perring point out that he was barred/banned from being a social worker. In my opinion, the Health and Care Professions Tribunal Service (that barred him from social work) and Lincolnshire County Council’s Children’s Services also deserve scrutiny. They may be just as dishonest as Fraser Perring.
Pretium Q3 2019 production results – management lowers guidance
Highlights from the production results:
- 2019 guidance lowered from 390-420k ounces to 340-350k. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- Mill capacity is excessive as throughput fell from 3562 tpd in Q2 to 3367 tpd in Q3 2019.
It’s incredible that this management team is still around. They have repeatedly misled investors and continue to destroy shareholder capital.
Nonetheless, despite all of the problems with Pretium’s management, the underlying deposit is probably one of the better mining assets out there.
The legal system often doesn’t work the way you think it works
The legal system is rarely about having an incredibly nuanced understanding of case law or spending a lot of time carefully reading the law as written. Rather, it’s about politics, strategy, judges being human beings, and the art of convincing others with good storytelling. What this means is that somebody who knows enough about how the legal and judicial systems actually work can get away with doing things that they really shouldn’t be doing.
Writing for finance: 10 tips from a mildly successful blogger
Do you need to write advertising materials to get more customers? Do you need to write analyst reports for your boss? Here are 10 tips on how to be a more effective writer.
The automatic brain
Our brain will automatically leap into action when it senses danger. If we are in physical danger, it will trigger our ‘flight or fight’ response. If we are in social or emotional danger, it will message us through feelings such as anxiety so that we avoid that situation. Unfortunately, this system doesn’t always act perfectly and can cause us to behave irrationally. For example, we may feel a sense of dread when faced with an unpleasant task. This leads to procrastination, an irrational behaviour that many of us wish we didn’t have.
This post will look at:
- How our brains nudge us towards irrational behaviours.
- How we can get rid of those irrational behaviours.
- How we can use it to understand narcissists and how to deal with them.
Pretium Q4 2018 update: management is crazy but the mine did generate a lot of cash
Firstly, I should admit that I was wrong about Pretium. I thought that the situation would be like Rubicon Minerals where the resource modelling issues would cause the stock to immediately blow up. That did not happen. The company has generated a substantial amount of cash that it has used to pay down debt and interest. I was surprised that the grades did ramp up to high levels and that the mine did generate substantial cash.
Going forward, management hasn’t provided a serious guidance as the range is unreasonably tight at less than ±4% (see slide 25 of the earnings presentation). This is fresh off of missing its previous guidance and (rightfully) blaming that miss on the variability of the deposit. Bizarrely, it seems that management hasn’t learned from its past mistake.
My takeaway is this:
- Management is guiding for a weak first half of 2019 (presumably below 10.4 g/t), as indicated by their remarks on the conference call.
- Beyond that, I don’t think that management / Pretium’s geologists have a great idea as to what grades will be. If there was good news, such as the mine consistently producing grades in the 10g/t range or higher, it would make more sense for management to behave more normally.
A grab bag of shorts (Jan 2019)
This post is a list of short ideas, sorted by market cap. The borrow on these stocks is generally 10% or lower. Some of the more interesting shorts are AMD, PVG, TMR.TO, CRC, Chinese reverse mergers, and CGIP.
