Friday, October 21, 2011
Monday, October 17, 2011
Sprott Launches Corporate Class, New Fund
"Sprott Asset Management has launched Sprott Corporate Class Inc., a mutual fund corporation which will allow investors to switch between investment mandates without triggering a taxable disposition.
As part of the launch, the company is also offering a new mandate, the Sprott Resource Class, which will be managed by Eric Sprott, Rick Rule, Paul Wong, Charles Oliver, Jamie Horvat and Eric Nuttall. The fund will also serve as the rollover vehicle for Sprott’s Flow-Through limited partnerships."
As part of the launch, the company is also offering a new mandate, the Sprott Resource Class, which will be managed by Eric Sprott, Rick Rule, Paul Wong, Charles Oliver, Jamie Horvat and Eric Nuttall. The fund will also serve as the rollover vehicle for Sprott’s Flow-Through limited partnerships."
- Read the full article here:
Thursday, October 13, 2011
Why have the Gold Equities Lagged?
Why have the gold equities lagged? Eric Sprott provided a few reasons and what he is doing about it:
First and foremost: the sell-side’s abysmal gold price estimates. While the futures market is comfortably forecasting a continuation of today’s levels, the majority of sell-side analysts refuse to update their gold price estimates to reflect its recent strength. A rising gold price is normally a bad sign for the broader equity markets, and generally indicates a bearish trend. As bears ourselves, we’re completely fine with this, and invest accordingly. But the sell-side has difficulty pairing bearishness with new underwriting opportunities. It doesn’t mean you have to believe their price forecasts however.
The second reason is gold’s volatility. The amount of paper gold and silver contracts that trade on the futures and equities exchanges still dwarf the amount of actual physical trading that takes place. Paper markets continue to set price discovery – thereby allowing for dramatic volatility with little or no influence from actual physical fundamentals. In the LBMA market, for example, market participants traded an average 19.6 million ounces of gold PER DAY in July 2011.1,2 Keep in mind that the total gold mine production in 2010, globally, was approximately 86.5 million ounces. Global gold mine production is not expected to increase significantly year-over-year, so the LBMA is essentially trading a year’s worth of production in less than a week. And this is just ONE market. When you add the COMEX futures and gold ETFs, the paper trading volume becomes absurdly high. When price discovery is dictated by levered paper contracts with no physical backing, it’s extremely easy and relatively inexpensive to jostle the spot price around. The result for gold has been many days of extreme downside volatility, despite a strong and consistent overall upward trend. Investors don’t like volatility – and the constant whipsawing has probably kept many of them away from the gold equity sector as a result.
Thirdly – investors still remember how badly gold equities got crushed in 2008. There was a reason they sold off so aggressively however – they were the most profitable positions investors owned going into the ‘08 crisis. Gold equities had enjoyed a strong bull trend going back to 2001, with the HUI Index appreciating by 980% from its November 2000 low through to August 2008. Investor behaviour is fairly consistent – when panic hits, you sell your winning positions first.
In many of the funds we manage at Sprott, we’ve transitioned out of gold bullion and into gold equities to better participate in the continuation of the trend indicated above. As long-time investors in this space, we can assure you that the production growth rates will be significantly higher in the junior stocks. They continue to trade at discounted valuations, and we believe they offer the best opportunity to build exposure. Margin expansion is the key metric for this industry, and the market is now acknowledging the miners’ improvement in margin capture – which has occurred despite the increase in capital and operating costs. We meet with a large number of gold mining management teams on a weekly basis, and based on those meetings, it appears that the average cost of producing an ounce of gold today, all in, is now around $800. At $1,200 gold, these companies can capture roughly $400 in EBITDA. At $1800 gold, however, they’re now capturing $1,000 per ounce in EBITDA - representing an increase of 150% in profit margin. That is significantly far above what any other equity sector has been able to generate over the past year.
Amazingly – despite this new reality for gold producers, we are still finding opportunities in select gold and silver mining companies that can be purchased today at 2-3 times their 2-year-out forecasted cash flow. These multiples are based on the current gold and silver spot price, and if these companies hit their production targets, and gold and silver continue their appreciation – we may discover that these stocks were trading at less than 1 times 2-year-out cash flow today. Having been in the business for many years, we can tell you that investing in a stock at 1 times 2-year-out cash flow tends to be a winning proposition – let alone in an industry that literally mines the world’s reserve currency out of the ground.
In our view, gold stocks represent a bona fide growth sector in an otherwise dreadful equity market. All other equity sectors are weakening due to sovereign uncertainty and the reemergence of soundly weak economic data. The recent disconnect between gold equities and bullion isn’t new either. We’ve seen it before over the past decade, and the returns generated after previous divergences have averaged around 26% (see Table 2). Given the recent performance correlations, the HUI’s breakout above 600 and spot gold now firmly above $1600, we expect this rebound in gold equities to be prolonged and much more significant in percentage terms.
Equity investors shouldn’t let $1800 gold dissuade them from participating in precious metals equities. The world is still dramatically underexposed to gold, and we firmly believe it should represent a higher percentage of investors’ total portfolios today. The fact remains that both gold and silver continue to trade well below their inflation-adjusted highs in nominal terms, and the market is now beginning to acknowledge the profit potential that precious metals equities offer at today’s bullion prices. We believe the equities will offer more upside than the bullion over time. Many of the smaller names are well priced and have momentum behind them. The prospects for gold stocks look extremely bright.
First and foremost: the sell-side’s abysmal gold price estimates. While the futures market is comfortably forecasting a continuation of today’s levels, the majority of sell-side analysts refuse to update their gold price estimates to reflect its recent strength. A rising gold price is normally a bad sign for the broader equity markets, and generally indicates a bearish trend. As bears ourselves, we’re completely fine with this, and invest accordingly. But the sell-side has difficulty pairing bearishness with new underwriting opportunities. It doesn’t mean you have to believe their price forecasts however.
The second reason is gold’s volatility. The amount of paper gold and silver contracts that trade on the futures and equities exchanges still dwarf the amount of actual physical trading that takes place. Paper markets continue to set price discovery – thereby allowing for dramatic volatility with little or no influence from actual physical fundamentals. In the LBMA market, for example, market participants traded an average 19.6 million ounces of gold PER DAY in July 2011.1,2 Keep in mind that the total gold mine production in 2010, globally, was approximately 86.5 million ounces. Global gold mine production is not expected to increase significantly year-over-year, so the LBMA is essentially trading a year’s worth of production in less than a week. And this is just ONE market. When you add the COMEX futures and gold ETFs, the paper trading volume becomes absurdly high. When price discovery is dictated by levered paper contracts with no physical backing, it’s extremely easy and relatively inexpensive to jostle the spot price around. The result for gold has been many days of extreme downside volatility, despite a strong and consistent overall upward trend. Investors don’t like volatility – and the constant whipsawing has probably kept many of them away from the gold equity sector as a result.
Thirdly – investors still remember how badly gold equities got crushed in 2008. There was a reason they sold off so aggressively however – they were the most profitable positions investors owned going into the ‘08 crisis. Gold equities had enjoyed a strong bull trend going back to 2001, with the HUI Index appreciating by 980% from its November 2000 low through to August 2008. Investor behaviour is fairly consistent – when panic hits, you sell your winning positions first.
In many of the funds we manage at Sprott, we’ve transitioned out of gold bullion and into gold equities to better participate in the continuation of the trend indicated above. As long-time investors in this space, we can assure you that the production growth rates will be significantly higher in the junior stocks. They continue to trade at discounted valuations, and we believe they offer the best opportunity to build exposure. Margin expansion is the key metric for this industry, and the market is now acknowledging the miners’ improvement in margin capture – which has occurred despite the increase in capital and operating costs. We meet with a large number of gold mining management teams on a weekly basis, and based on those meetings, it appears that the average cost of producing an ounce of gold today, all in, is now around $800. At $1,200 gold, these companies can capture roughly $400 in EBITDA. At $1800 gold, however, they’re now capturing $1,000 per ounce in EBITDA - representing an increase of 150% in profit margin. That is significantly far above what any other equity sector has been able to generate over the past year.
Amazingly – despite this new reality for gold producers, we are still finding opportunities in select gold and silver mining companies that can be purchased today at 2-3 times their 2-year-out forecasted cash flow. These multiples are based on the current gold and silver spot price, and if these companies hit their production targets, and gold and silver continue their appreciation – we may discover that these stocks were trading at less than 1 times 2-year-out cash flow today. Having been in the business for many years, we can tell you that investing in a stock at 1 times 2-year-out cash flow tends to be a winning proposition – let alone in an industry that literally mines the world’s reserve currency out of the ground.
In our view, gold stocks represent a bona fide growth sector in an otherwise dreadful equity market. All other equity sectors are weakening due to sovereign uncertainty and the reemergence of soundly weak economic data. The recent disconnect between gold equities and bullion isn’t new either. We’ve seen it before over the past decade, and the returns generated after previous divergences have averaged around 26% (see Table 2). Given the recent performance correlations, the HUI’s breakout above 600 and spot gold now firmly above $1600, we expect this rebound in gold equities to be prolonged and much more significant in percentage terms.
Equity investors shouldn’t let $1800 gold dissuade them from participating in precious metals equities. The world is still dramatically underexposed to gold, and we firmly believe it should represent a higher percentage of investors’ total portfolios today. The fact remains that both gold and silver continue to trade well below their inflation-adjusted highs in nominal terms, and the market is now beginning to acknowledge the profit potential that precious metals equities offer at today’s bullion prices. We believe the equities will offer more upside than the bullion over time. Many of the smaller names are well priced and have momentum behind them. The prospects for gold stocks look extremely bright.
Read the full article here:
Sunday, October 9, 2011
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