"At today’s silver price, Santa Ana will throw out about $100 million per year in free cash flow"
Now that Bear Creek is fully funded, financier seeks project for Troon Ventures
By Peter Kennedy
She doesn’t have a full time job, and claims to inhabit a very narrow area of expertise.
But that didn’t prevent Catherine McLeod-Seltzer from recently helping to raise $130 million for Bear Creek Mining Corp. (TSX: V.BCM, Stock Forum), a junior mining company which is focused on developing silver projects in Peru, a country she knows well from previous work in Latin America.
The Vancouver-based Bear Creek Chairman and mine financier is perhaps best known for co-founding Arequipa Resources Ltd., a company that was sold to Barrick Gold Corp. (TSX: T.ABX, Stock Forum) for $1.1 billion back in 1996.
When Stockhouse spoke to McLeod-Seltzer by phone this week, she was getting her personal life back in order after spending three of the past four weeks marketing Bear Creek’s latest financing in major cities in Canada, the U.S. and Europe.
“When you raise $130 million in cash, it is important to keep shareholders appraised about what is going on,’’ she said.
Trading at $8.45 on Friday in a 52-week range of $3.51 and $9.42, Bear Creek has a market cap of $763.8 million, based on 90.4 million shares outstanding.
With about $150 million in the treasury, the company is positioned to start construction of its Santa Ana silver project in Peru, a $70 million heap leach silver mine which is expected to produce about 5 million ounces annually, starting in 2012. Cash costs at the site are forecast to be about US$8.50 per ounce.
Bear Creek is also looking at the feasibility of building a second Peruvian mine, the Corani, which is expected to cost about $400 million to develop and will likely produce about 15 million ounces of silver annually. Production there is expected to start in 2014.
“At today’s silver price, Santa Ana will throw out about $100 million per year in free cash flow,’’ said McLeod-Seltzer.
It is cash flow that could enable Bear Creek to go it alone in developing Corani and quickly make the transition from being a pure exploration play to become a fully fledged mining company.
If everything goes according to plan, McLeod-Seltzer said the company will have the production stream to rival Pan American Silver Corp. (TSX: T.PAA, Stock Forum) and (NASDAQ: PAAS, Stock Forum), a company with silver mines in Peru, Mexico and Bolivia.
“There is nobody else in this space that has that kind of growth profile, with technically low risk projects, located in a politically secure, mining friendly jurisdiction.’’
But as Bear Creek moves to establish itself as a silver producer in Peru, McLeod-Seltzer is already looking ahead to her next mining play.
She is part of well known group of mining industry officials who are on the board of Troon Ventures Ltd. (TSX: V.TVN, Stock Forum), a shell company with about $10 million in cash.
McLeod-Seltzer and her fellow board members, including former Lundin Mining Corp. (TSX: T.LUN, Stock Forum) chief executive officer Colin Benner, are focused on finding a viable project to develop.
“We are pretty picky and have all the time in the world,’’ she said. “You can bet that with this group, when we acquire a project, it will be a good one.’’
A member of a prominent Vancouver mining family, McLeod-Seltzer is clearly well connected. Aside from being Chairman of Bear Creek, she is also Chairman and director of Pacific Rim Mining Corp. (TSX: T.PMU, Stock Forum), a lead director at Stornoway Diamond Corp. (TSX: T.SWY, Stock Forum) and a director of Kinross Gold Corp. (TSX: T.K, Stock Forum).
She is also a large shareholder of Lundin Group company Lucara Diamond Corp. (TSX: V.LUC, Stock Forum).
But she credits her success to teamwork and an ability to locate and work with proven mine finders such as Arequipa co-founder David Lowell and Bear Creek President Andrew Swarthout.
“I don’t run the day to day,’’ she said. “But I’m there as a resource, on the marketing, the strategy and the money raising side of things,’’ she said.
Catherine McLeod-Seltzer Bio
Catherine McLeod-Seltzer is Chairman of Bear Creek Mining Corp. and is best known for co-founding Arequipa Resources Ltd., a company that was sold to Barrick Gold Corp. for $1.1 billion in 1996. She has raised $600 million in working capital for mining exploration in the past 25 years.
Zurück
