Equinox Partners Precious Metals, L.P. - Q3 2016 Letter
Dear Partners and Friends,
orezone
Developments at Orezone have been disappointing in the last few months. Trading around C$1.20 in early August, the stock collapsed below C$0.60 after the company announced that a resource update, anticipated to change little, would in fact reduce the size of the deposit by 30%. This change brought the economics of the project into question and, coming shortly after an equity raise, severely damaged the company’s credibility.
We spent a large amount of time evaluating the new information. While there is still uncertainty, we believe that the eventual outcome here is not nearly as negative as the headline number would indicate. 10% of the decrease related to resources that were not in the mine plan to begin with and therefore do not impact the valuation. We would attribute the remaining change to stylistic differences in resource estimation between the consultants used by Orezone. The recent resource was done by RPA, which is considered the most conservative in the business. We believe that with incremental drilling the company can restore the lost ounces to the estimate and the mine plan. Furthermore, we believe that high-grade early years of the mine plan have not been impacted by the change in the resource estimate. These early years drive the payback on the project and a large fraction of the value. While there is still uncertainty, we believe the market reaction was too strong.
We have taken the decline in the stock price as an opportunity to increase our position in Orezone. We expect substantial information to be released in the next few months that will determine whether our assessment of the situation is correct. It will likely take longer still for the management to regain credibility with the market but at some point the focus will return to the potential of the project.
goldquest mining
Goldquest has been the other company we have been buying as the stock price has come down. Unlike Orezone, there have not been any negative issues with the company but the stock nonetheless fell from a high of C$0.66 to a low of C$0.35. With no change to the investment thesis, we saw this as an attractive opportunity to increase the position. One of the more illiquid stocks we own, we have steadily increased the position ahead of anticipated drill results from their regional drilling campaign in the Dominican Republic.
research
In addition to many meetings in New York during the busy fall marketing season, we attended the Denver Gold Show in September. This is the largest precious metals conference annually and we were able to meet with a large number of companies in a short period of time. We also met with Bear Creek at their offices while in Lima and visited Altius in their home jurisdiction of Labrador in eastern Canada. Upcoming site visits include a trip to Premier’s properties in Nevada in November and a trip to Australia in December to see Gold Road’s property as well as a few new prospects.
Sincerely,
Sean Fieler









