Source: Brian Sylvester of The Gold Report 11/05/2010
Encompass Funds Portfolio Manager Marshall Berol and Analyst Kevin Puil spend a lot of time examining junior mining companies for investment opportunities and they're pretty good at it. The Encompass Fund was up 139% in 2009 and it's up another 21% so far this year. In this exclusive interview with The Gold Report, we talk to Marshall and Kevin about how they choose junior gold stocks and whether or not the growing number of takeovers is influencing their decisions.
Auszug aus dem Interview:
TGR: Two of the larger investment positions in the Encompass Fund are Avion Gold Corp. (TSX.V:AVR; OTCQX:AVGCF) and Exeter Resource Corp. (NYSE.A:XRA; TSX:XRC; Fkft:EXB). Do you expect these two companies to be taken over, or are these companies that just provide good value?
MB: They probably represent both aspects of what we were just talking about. I'll start with Exeter. Exeter Resource has the Caspiche project, a very large gold and copper deposit in the Andean Mountains of Chile. Malcolm Gissen, my co-manager, and I have visited the property. It's a very large project that has a 30, 40 million ounces of gold equivalent defined in a 43-101 resource report but several billion dollars in capital is necessary to turn that project into a mine. South of Caspiche, Kinross Gold and Barrick Gold Corporation (NYSE:ABX; TSX:ABX) own the Cerro Casale gold-copper project. And to the north Kinross has another existing mine. When we initially invested in Exeter several years ago, we felt they had some attractive projects and believed in the management. At the time, Exeter had projects in Chile and in Argentina. Earlier this year they spun off the Argentinean projects into Extorre Gold Mines Ltd. (TSX:XG; Fkft:E1R; OTCQX:EXGMF). Extorre is now moving toward production in southern Argentina.
Exeter management has said that it's likely that the Caspiche project in Chile will either be sold or the company will be sold, or Caspiche will be joint-ventured because it's likely beyond the capacity of Exeter to develop it as a mine. Some other larger company is likely to do that. That's probably a good example of a company that is not likely to be the one that brings the project into production.
Avion on the other hand is operating in West Africa. It has brought a couple of mines into production and has done some acquisitions. Kevin can give you some additional comments on Avion.
KP: Avion is one of those smaller junior producers that we talked about earlier that is reasonably priced and could attract some suitors. Avion has good cash flow. It's in a great neighborhood, and there is the potential to discover millions more ounces there.
TGR: Where are its mines located?
MB: Avion's operating mines are in Mali, West Africa and they are advancing projects that are in Burkina Faso, also in West Africa. They have just acquired some other projects in Burkina Faso.
TGR: Is there any jurisdiction risk there? Mali is relatively stable but Burkina Faso is a bit more on the edge.
KP: We've obviously done work on the political risk in Burkina Faso and are quite comfortable with that mine's jurisdiction.
...
www.theaureport.com/pub/na/7788