Equinox Partners Precious Metals, L.P. - Q1 2017 Letter
Dear Partners and Friends,
exploration and acquisition
During the mining industry downturn, companies were desperate to adjust their cost structures to the reality of lower metals prices, squeezed margins, and high levels of debt. Among the easiest cuts to make was greenfield exploration spending. This is R&D for the mining industry, the benefits of which take many years to materialize. For executives trying to stop the bleeding, these are easy dollars to target.
In addition, there is some evidence that would indicate that major players in the industry are reassessing their approach towards exploration. Looking back at the boom years, these companies now see that ever-larger exploration budgets did not lead to more or better discoveries: much of the money was simply wasted. As a result, still chastened by the downturn, management at these companies are gravitating towards an outsourced model of exploration, wherein they provide capital to smaller, more entrepreneurial junior companies.
We’ve heard of this interest from the exploration companies we speak to, and it’s evident in the number of equity placements that larger producers have done with smaller explorers. The seniors will focus their internal budgets on brownfields exploration near their existing mines while leaving the new discoveries to the juniors.
This is a new trend and it bodes well for our portfolios. Seniors are making capital available to juniors, often on better terms than they can get from the equity market. These placements also lend a degree of credibility to the junior’s projects and often involve some form of technical oversight by the larger company. However, while we don’t dispute that the seniors are ineffective at doing greenfield exploration themselves, this outsourcing strategy is insufficient as a replacement. The reality is that, at some point, they will need to take ownership of the discoveries that work and bring them into their production pipelines.
Therefore, we have concentrated the portfolio and our ongoing research on the assets that should prove attractive to larger companies as they seek to rebuild their portfolios. When the market rallied in the spring of 2016, we saw early signs of the seniors starting to look to the future as evidenced by several acquisitions. However, the subsequent gold/silver price pullback put further activity on hold, and this year has been quiet so far on the M&A front. Should gold/silver continue to climb this year, we’d expect the deal volume to increase accordingly. A large number of juniors have already come to the market for fresh equity and we suspect the seniors are watching how they deploy that capital with keen interest.
About 30% of the portfolio is comprised of companies that we would not expect to be targets for acquisition (Dundee Precious Metals, Mandalay Resources, Endeavour Mining, Altius Minerals and Tahoe Resources). The balance, however, represents a suite of high-quality development and production stage assets that would fit well in the portfolios of larger producers.
Sincerely,
Sean Fieler











