GGPChat

It appears John Cornford is far from a fan of ours.

https://masterinvestor.co.uk/equities/g ... land-gold/

Plenty to pick the bones out of.

This guy is obviously - when it comes to GGP - either clueless or his article is deliberately littered with factual inaccuracies. Ie a fraudulent hatchet job… It’s one or the other…IMO

Hmmm…? Is a short in trouble somewhere? well i suppose 88m is quite a gamble.

The article is unprofessional, littered with mistakes and factual inaccuracies… TBF John Conford makes motley fool look well researched. ( not sure how he managed that).

Turns out it appears he’s also either an avid reader over on ADVFN (or an actual ggp poster) by the name of “lurker5” 24 Jul '22 - 09:24 who wrote a very similar, rambling account using all the same numbers (??) so copycat or FUDster?

“ lurker5… “ Sounds odd really, doesn’t it?

A quick pass of Confield’s work suggests he’s not fantastically talented either, though he claims to have “saved investors from SXX” (where have we heard that line??) but of course it’s an unverified claim. All he had to do was evidence a link to his article... And then goes on to confirm SXX is nothing like GGP anyhow?!?!. So why make that link then? Agenda?

And most interesting, his favourite tip for mining developer is Solgold (down another 4% today to 22.5p. Maybe he should apply his own >10 years = 0 NPV rules to Cascabel…? Should it be ascribed ‘zero NpV’ value because it won’t produce for another 8-10 years? Of course not. And that’s, if they can get the funding? The funding hurdle is so huge 5x Mcap… I personally think SOlg shareholders are in trouble … unless a bidding war erupts - which it may. All BHP need to do is sit it out…

Very different situation at Telfer. As we full well know.

You can tell it’s a hatchet job. Here’s why;

It’s all in the ‘twisted ‘ facts .. especially the verifiable published ones: eg we’re actually 18months from Production ( not 3 years as he states) Hav production is slated at H1 2024, I recall?.

That’s obviously part of ggps premium valuation versus, say Cornfords other tip solgold, for example, which is languishing at 23.5p today (not far off 5 year lows by the looks) and a long way from his 40p target for good reason:

That’s because owning 100% of cascabel is awfully problematic, being so far from infrastructure, it's super-expensive development is many miles from any production too. In fact there is no clear road to development (let alone production),… and accordingly, I gather solg just failed in a major capital equity raise this past week or so (double check the RNS - but that’s the rumour, I heard )

So given the big picture over there, his judgement leaves you… thinking, hmmm? He’s suggesting investors should be sat in solg for how long? Indefinitely? Discovered in 2014, and yet they only just released a PFS…. Hmmm? Okay.

As we know, The Hav PFS (released 2 years from farm in ) is based on just a fraction of Havieron. The pfs numbers focused on a 2mt per year starter mine.

But that’s not going to feed Telfer is it? No way.

Telfer’s ore train nameplate capacity is 2x 11mt or 22mt per annum. Now we know one of Telfers two trains is to be dedicated to Havieron - with a nameplate capacity of 6mt (this is probably metallurgical and due to the higher Hav head grade)

Newcrest are not going to run 2mt of Havieron high grade through Telfer (when it can handle 6mt are they?). Nope! No chance. So something suggests they see a much bigger operation.

They will if course find and design a way to produced more than 2-3mt (but that wasn’t possible whilst they wanted to value the 5% as cheap as possible ). Cornford doesn’t even realise that it’s not an ‘option’ that GGP can decline, thus the motivation to acquire it cheap as possible is palpable.

Now that the 5% is almost sorted the upcoming December quarter DFS should upgrade Havieron production to between 3-6mt.

FYI (Assumes 90% recovery)

3mt at 3.6g/t is c315k oz production.
But 4Mt @3.6g/t = 418koz
5mt @ 3.6g/t = 522koz
6mt @3.6g/t = 627koz

See how quick they could step it up…. Because they will. With 1.5mt haul shafts IMO…. 6mt was mentioned early by Hannam and partners, for a reason. That’s what was discussed with GGP, before the 5% JV clause was modified.

There’s also the large, but very efficient, compact footprint, relatively high grade orebody. Bamps has repeatedly observed the highest grade is concentrated especially near the top 100m where 3-7gt will be the first development ore and early production stopes (cuts) in the best material.

Further Hav is quickly scalable beyond the PFS’ 2-3mt from the existing exploration decline. This can be achieved with the addition of a 2-3m diameter haul shaft, or, a 2nd conveyor decline - which will more probably serve the (bulk) block cave mining.

These facts are not lost on NCM. And that is why they have been careful not to talk it up.

But think about it : a mine running at Telfer’s “Havieron ore train” 6mt name plate full capacity would exhaust Havieron in 4-5 years.

But NCM are not doing this for 9 or 4-5 years. No way…. They are looking for 20 maybe another 50 years, (as they got from Telfer). Which is still on its last legs but still produced 400koz annually (albeit expensively due to v low sub 0.85g/t grades) after 45years and 18moz since 1st production in 1978.

John Conford inexplicably suggests the mine will suddenly cost 27% more ( $100m ) when we have been told by ncm 30% will cost $73m so in fact 25% will cost even less. He basically appears to adds $40-50m in liabilities by assuming all the $ 50m loan is also 100% spent.

There are so many holes and inaccuracies contained with this so obviously, an agenda led piece one has to be left questioning the author’s motives.

Further, I’ve never heard of “master investor” but certainly not a masterful article… Especially if they post the same content on AVDFN - that makes them look a long way from balanced or impartial.

Maybe go check him out for yourselves:
https://uk.advfn.com/forum/search?q=lur ... _poster=on

Having had a night to reflect on the article.

Well, where to start….

I find it of interest that the author declines to state their financial position in relation to Greatland Gold, which is normally done on such articles. I would suggest in that case they are probably hold a short position.

The article is a mish-mash of misleading statements, calculations and factual inaccuracies aimed at spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt (FUD) to current and potential PI’s. Have no doubt that Institutional Investors will actually read all of the regulatory updates, company presentations, broker notes and in all likelihood meet with the managing director (Shaun Day) to ensure they have a full understanding of the value the company has to offer, The author has obviously failed to do much or any of the above.

The author relies predominantly on the 5% option price announced on the 21.07.2022, this being set at $60M USD. The author implies that this price was set by the independent valuer and therefore values the entire Havieron deposit at $1.2B USD, it was NOT and does NOT value the company. As rightly suggested in the article the price determination point used extremely old data (that from the original PFS announced over 18 months to the price determination date), as well as low gold price assumptions. The independent valuer was forced, by the process, to choose a price based on those submitted by Greatland Gold and Newcrest, I guess the author has not read any of the RNS’s in detail, or reviewed any of the interviews with Shaun Day or presentations on the company web site.Unless he is trying to deliberately mislead in his article.

Shaun Day, the managing director of Greatland, clearly states, over and over again, that the “Option Price” set is a price not a valuation of Havieron, based upon a “fraction of a fraction” of the ore body.

It is also of interest that the author highlights that many PI’s do not “do the numbers”, but then proceeds to produce a set, based upon a mix of outdated, missing and inaccurate data (based upon his assumptions and limited knowledge) to value the company. This is especially poignant, when he is prepared to challenge far bigger industry experts on theirs, somewhat ironic! And just to state that as a PI myself, I have done the numbers and they look nothing like the authors.

I could go on and on.

Ultimately, I cannot decide whether this is simply a poorly researched misleading article, or a scurrilous attempt to mislead PI’s, by the author for potential financial gain for him and his cronies.

On a footnote, it is interesting to note that the Short Position in Greatland Gold is still increasing on a daily basis and is now reported to be in excess of 89.6 Million shares.

I don’t normally read these sort of articles.
You can see straight through this journalistic approach to stir up trouble.
His gloating about SXX telling investors to sell up 2 weeks before its demise was disgraceful anyone could have seen the writing on the wall, in fact I was telling other investors to sell after the planning meeting granting permission. They were too small to accomplish that project.

Were Ggp too small to take Havieron to production of course they were and it’s not worth pretending otherwise.
25% of a globally important asset is the golden goose for many junior exploration companies.

His financial assumptions are very poor but he is right to point out that some brokers production valuations are unworkable.

Initially 3m ton per annum is a maximum.
I tried to push Shaun in London to say we needed another form of extracting ore quickly and this should be a shaft not a conveyor, but he wasn’t forthcoming except to say he prefers shafts.
A conveyor will not be of use for this SLOS operation that will be from the bulk mining.
Sprotts 9m is unworkable.

This reporter has ignored the first Ore as Hydrogen has mentioned.
Extremely high grade from HAD005 right at the top where the gold may average 8g/t and copper 3-4%
This first ore revenues will be extremely high with a very low capex and extraction costs.
Shaun and Sandeep have both said this first ore will pay for the rest of the mine, well the SLOS anyway.
Lower down maybe in the 4th zone the revenues will pay for the bulk mining capex as the grades are extremely good here too.

This reporter has ignored this part of the financing and more concerned with concentrating on an outdated NPV valuation to twist the story.

The SLOS operation will grow in size if they construct a shaft or a second decline.
If this happens 6m ton pa + is achievable from high grade pods before any bulk mining.
The Eastern Breccia mine will be bulk mined as soon as the SLOS Decline gets down to the lower levels and may run in tandem with the SLOS lower levels.
The main oval bulk mine can’t start till after the SLOS.

The Eastern Breccia is too large for a single bulk cave so am expecting a number of these.

Ignore this article it’s just not worth reading.

I have come across his work before at Xtract Resources.

He produced valuations and 'had' them dropped onto LsE about 18 months ago, March 2021 suggesting the company would/should be valued around 50p. At the time it was spiking at around 8p. I'd held that stock for about 6 weeks at the time. It felt very P&D BECAUSE of that prediction. I was lucky as the SP plummeted to around 3p. It was then taken on by The Roast guys who did their thing and was back up towards 7.5p by year end. However, its back at 3.5p area again.

Perhaps one of the shorts has outed themselves.

We've speculated for a while they are not getting much bang for their buck.

Under “Our contributors” section of Master Investor…

“John Cornford
John is semi-retired after 40 years in City research of one sort or another covering most sectors, and an earlier career in the MoD and management consulting. As well as institutional research he has also long taken an interest in research for private investors, editing the long established and top performing Investors Stockmarket Weekly in the ‘90s, and later Small Cap Shares. In the noughties he worked for seven years with Hardman and published his own research for institutions via his FourSquare Research. He believes it is scandalous that the FCA’s misplaced rules have denied quality research to private investors - leaving them at the mercy of bucket shops and tipsters.”

The mighty Foursquare Research ……5 followers on Twitter

Foursquare Research Google search……sole remotely linked offering is a ropey site of a Atlanta Georgia US market research set up aimed at non profit organisations ( ironic)

Hydrogen wrote: ↑Fri Aug 05, 2022 2:36 am This guy is obviously - when it comes to GGP - either clueless or his article is deliberately littered with factual inaccuracies. Ie a fraudulent hatchet job… It’s one or the other…

Hmmm…? Is a short in trouble somewhere? well i suppose 88m is quite a gamble.

The article is unprofessional, littered with mistakes and factual inaccuracies throughout… TBF John Conford makes motley fool look well researched. ( not sure how he managed that).

Turns out it appears he’s also either an avid reader over on ADVFN (or an actual ggp poster) by the name of lurker524 Jul '22 - 09:24 who wrote a very similar, rambling account using all the same numbers(??) so copycat or FUDster?

“ lurker524… “ Sounds odd really doesn’t it?

A quick pass of Confield’s work suggests he’s not fantastically talented either, though he claims to have saved investors from SXX (where have we heard that line??) but of course its an unverified claim. All he had to do was link the article.

And most interesting, his favourite tip for mining developer is Solgold.

You can tell it’s a hatchet job. Here’s why;

It’s all in the ‘twisted ‘ facts .. especially the verifiable published ones: eg we’re actually 18months from Production ( not 3 years as he states) Hav production is slated at H1 2024, I recall?.

That’s obviously part of ggps premium valuation versus, say Cornfords other tip solgold, for example, which is languishing at 23.5p today (not far off 5 year lows by the looks) and a long way from his 40p target for good reason:

That’s because owning 100% of cascabel is awfully problematic, being so far from infrastructure, it's super-expensive development is many miles from any production too. In fact there is no clear road to development (let alone production),… and accordingly, I gather solg just failed in a major capital equity raise this past week or so (double check the RNS - but that’s the rumour, I heard )

So given the big picture over there, his judgement leaves you… thinking, hmmm? He’s suggesting investors should be sat in solg for how long? Indefinitely? Discovered in 2014, and yet they only just released a PFS…. Hmmm? Okay.

As we know, The Hav PFS was (released 2 years from farm in ) is based on a fraction of Havieron. The pfs numbers focused on a 2mt per year starter mine.

But that’s not going to feed Telfer is it? No way.

Telfer’s ore train nameplate capacity is 2x 11mt or 22mt per annum. Now we know one of Telfers two trains is to be dedicated to Havieron - with a nameplate capacity of 6mt (this is probably due to the higher Hav at grade)

Newcrest are not going to run 2mt of Havieron high grade through Telfer (when it can handle 6mt are they?). Nope! No chance. So something suggests they see a much bigger operation.

They will if course design a way to produced more than 2-3mt (but that wasn’t possible whilst they wanted to value the 5% as cheap as possible ). JC doesn’t even realise that it’s not an option that GGP can decline, thus the motivation to acquire it cheap as possible.

Now that’s sorted the upcoming December quarter DFS should upgrade Havieron production to between 3-6mt.

FYI (Assumes 90% recovery)

3mt at 3.6g/t is c315k oz production.
But 4Mt @3.6g/t = 418koz
5mt @ 3.6g/t = 522koz
6mt @3.6g/t = 627koz

See how quick they step it up…. Because they will. 6mt was mentioned early by Hannam and partners, for a reason. That’s what was discussed.

There’s also the large, but very efficient, compact footprint, relatively high grade orebody. Bamps has repeatedly observed the highest grade is concentrated especially near the top 100m where 3-7gt will be the first development ore and early production stopes (cuts) in the best material.

Further Hav is quickly scalable beyond the PFS’ 2-3mt from the existing exploration decline. This can be achieved with the addition of a 2-3m diameter haul shaft, or, a 2nd conveyor decline - which will more probably serve the (bulk) block cave mining.

These facts are not lost on NCM. And that is why they have been careful not to talk it up.

But think about it : a mine running at Telfer’s “Havieron ore train” 6mt name plate full capacity would exhaust Havieron in 4-5 years.

But NCM are not doing this for 9 or 4-5 years. No way…. They are looking for 20 maybe another 50 years, (as they got from Telfer). Which is still on its last legs but still produced 400koz annually (albeit expensively due to v low sub 0.85g/t grades) after 45years and 18moz since 1st production in 1978.

John Conford inexplicably suggestes the mine will suddenly cost 27% more ( $100m )when we have been told by ncm 30% will cost $73m so 25% will cost even less. He basically appears to adds $40-50m in liabilities by assuming all the $ 50m loan is spent also.

There are so many holes and inaccuracies contained with this so obviously agenda led piece one has to be left questioning the author’s motives.

Further, I’ve never heard of “master investor” but certainly not a masterful article… Especially if they post the same content on AVDFN - that makes them look not impartial.

Great post, Lurker does seem to be the same author going by content and mentioning “readers elsewhere”.

Lurkers posting history:

https://uk.advfn.com/forum/search?q=lur ... _poster=on

Again, the value of this forum is demonstrated. Thank you for sharing Nitram and well done to those above. Truth will prevail.

Hi All. Thank you to the posters here who have ripped this bad report to pieces. False news at best directly misleading at worst. ATB Speedy

Also, Jupiter’s recent confirmed buy and Willem’s increase to 45m would tend to suggest JCs assertions about funds buying GGP (on quality IMO), are also “completely out to lunch”?

Below is a copy of my reply to his article and has been posted on their web site as a comment, may be worth a few more replying if they have time, I would keep comments impersonal and focused on the content to ensure the moderator publishes it

Some of the issues or omissions in his article:
– EML has funding arranged and just awaiting an Environmental Permit apparently according to an acquaintance invested in them ?
– First production ore pegged for early 2024 and decline has been redesigned and experiencing better ground and may well exceed that in future updates.
– (now valued @12p at £480) should read £480m
– independent valuer NOT arbitrator and they were appointed to select either NCM or GGP’s valuation, not value the 5% themselves either using their own metrics or even the prescriptive metrics that included very conservative price decks in the JVA, so it was a binary process, not an independent value created by a 3rd party
– In the article John mentions ‘if GGP takes the $60m on offer for 5%’, highly inaccurate on top of the above as GGP has no say in this now the price determination exercise has ended, NCM have the option from July 20th for 30 business days towards end of August to choose whether they will purchase this 5% or not, GGP can NOT refuse the transaction.
– Some would argue that NCM may be very likely to pay $60m for the 5% despite John’s opinion that they would consider it too expensive as it is worth more than the 5%’s value to GGP, he can’t possibly know NCM’s mind set around the decision but fair enough, everyone has their own opinions of values but I would argue that the valuation NCM also submitted using teh same prescriptive metrics contained in JVA may not be what they truly value the deposit at
– Perhaps investigating and articulating why the MD Shaun Day is adamant that the prescriptive nature of the option exercise was detrimental to actually calculating FMV would have been apt and mention made of the PFS based on a fraction of the high-grade SE Crescent, itself a fraction of the ore body and the increasing propensity for a high grade corridor linking up the different zones of the ore body, presence of nickel now made public by GGP and of course the eastern breccia also delivering some of the best high grade drill hits within the ore body, very similar to the SE Crescent and how it may well turn out to also be/contain another high grade zone
– Seems hesitant to reference GGP’s own JORC compliant MRE update from Feb 2022 utilising drill data up to 05/12/21 despite the vast increases in resource/reserves (53% and 50% respectively) to the conservative Newcrest estimates and the CAGR since the Dec 2020 Maiden MRE of 43%
– Other notable exclusions are of the low forecast AISC placing GGP as the 2nd lowest cost gold company on the planet and with Polyus being Russian, probably making GGP the most investable gold company when adding geopolitical factors into the mix.
– He also suggests 10 years before bulk mining factors into Havieron, while for instance Hannam and Partners block cave valuation assumes block caving commencing in 2028 in their Feb 2021 update, so a much shorter period of time than he envisages.

Hi CY,

just to reaffirm our twitter convo, totally respect you have a differing opinion but why not try to articulate and post the points you feel support John's analysis. I was happy to read the article and spend 10-15 minutes to create and post some comments on their web site focusing on fact checking and my differing analysis vs any emotional feedback.

I do agree that some of the feedback is very emotive but in this thread I directed you too there are also important corrections listed there such as ETA for production according to John is 3 years as oppose to within 18 months and then block caving is planned for around 5 years and not the 10 he stated, so he's doubled these timeframes either through misunderstanding or lack of research as he hasn't articulated where he got these assumptions from.

And he had a complete misunderstanding of the option exercise terms and it is important for any potential or existing investor to understand how the process worked, what factors were part of the price determination and the binary nature of selecting two opposing valuations vs his incorrect statement that the 3rd party valuer priced the 5% at $60m and he doesn't delve into the important details such as having conservative price decks where in a usual valuation process you would look at various scenario's varying from conservative to optimal and looking in more details at the Newcrest MRE & PFS vs GGP MRE - both JORC compliant, different methodology and ore body zones etc.

I stand by my assertion he just isn't well researched and whether intentional or unintentional, that article does need more work, you absolutely must have the kind of details I have noted above correct when analysing or commenting on another company. Personally, I'd be interesting in you posting your thoughts on where you think John is correct so it could be debated in here and also hope you decide to stay as a member as I do value opposing opinions to debate with, although from our brief interactions I do think we have plenty we agree on too