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.

Thoughts on mining (2017 edition)

Some key lessons on mining companies:

1. They regularly withhold key information from investors.
2. Technical reports should not be relied upon because many of them are disconnected with reality.

Without key information on a mine’s economics, these companies cannot be accurately valued.  So… mining stocks aren’t a great place to look for longs.  You might spent a lot of effort trying to value a mine and still fall short of being able to find reliable information on that mine.

On the short side, there are some opportunities.

Iron ore miners (mainly in the Labrador trough)

So right now I am going through the miners in the Labrador trough area:

• Alderon (Altius Minerals owns a large stake in Alderon)
• MFC Industrial (MIL) owns a royalty on Cliffs’ Wabush mine
• Cliffs (CLF)
• Champion Minerals (CHM.TO)
• Labrador Iron Ore Royalty Corporation (LIF.UN)
• New Millennium Iron Corp (NML)
• Adriana Resources
• Zone Resources
• Oceanic Iron Ore Corp.

(I am obsessed with Altius Minerals ok?  See somebody else’s writeup on VIC.)