Regarding takeover, the company has never said it is entertaining a takeover. I think you are getting confused with a few people speculating on this forum about a takeover (including myself) and somehow drawing the conclusion WAF don’t have the ability to develop the project.
A takeover is a likely outcome for a few reasons:
1. General lack of lowest quartile sub (US$700) cost gold development assets globally among major and mid-tier gold producers.
2. Proximity of deposits within 50km which combined with Sanbrado likely allows for ‘district scale’ and mine life of 15-20 years. One of those deposits owned by a company which openly grows by acquisition, B2gold.
None of this implies WAF can’t get to production if they chose to. Nothing appears particularly technically challenging regarding metallurgy or mining. They have strong backers in Macquarie and Sprott who I’m sure could finance it with traditional mix of debt and equity given capex is not expected to be massive.
If we start to see some board appointments soon there may be some clues in the background of who they appoint.
Timeline for DFS being pushed out is correct decision for me given the game-changing nature of last 6 months of drilling. Obviously at some point they will need to do the DFS on what they have defined but it seems sensible to wait for now. Given the plant size is unlikely to change from previous study I wouldn’t have thought it would be a long timeline to update it. Infrastructure would be similar such as tailings dam, power, water etc. Really underground mine design and alteration to open pit designs would be the key changes.
WAF Price at posting:
38.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
(20min delay)
