Hey Gw, must admit I joined you today. Been watching EAR for quite a while and finally took a position today. The stock is very quiet, excitement from NST joining the register has died down, great exploration results have not come for a little while (I think they will soon, but... that's just me speculating), plus of course the upcoming resource updates and BFS which I expect will come out in April/May.
I very much agree with you regarding following NSTs lead, they clearly think there is going to be a huge amount of gold within EARs tenements. While I wish I was holding NST, their geo team would seem to be the best there is in Aust, so... the old adage, just follow the best.
The big price spike in January due to NST will undoubtedly have meant some bought in on the news, but... no T/O has materialized as yet. So impatience is kicking in, which I obviously see as an opportunity to enter with the share price being, as you say well below NST current average buy in price, plus only 20% higher than the last capital raising price (which those who participated in had a chance to exit with almost 100% gain in the spike). The MC reached over $200m, we are now down 30% from that peak.
I most definitely missed EARs rise from the lows, but now that NST has shown its hand, I am not going to miss out watching how they try to tie up EAR, with it having what I think will end up being an excellent stand alone project. The open pit grades are excellent, the strip ratio is relatively low and the capex also. This means any IRR is going to be stupidly good. The main issue for me later on, will be whether EAR can secure a production manager that has a track record far superior to the likes of BLK (huge disaster).
Finance will be extremely achievable, so much so that I think EAR will be able to get 100% debt finance, just like KIN did last year (fully $35m debt agreement to move/build their plant). I do still expect another $10m to be raised sometime in the next 12 months, but... EAR is in an extremely strong position.
@copperroad - NSTs 14m of shares which they bought after their initial 80m entry of $0.29, is at an average of $0.36, as I just took some time to look at the substantial holder notice. So without doing the exact figures, NSTs current average buyin is around $0.31. Around 10% higher than the current price. To me that means at a minimum, NST is willing to pay at least a 50% premium to that, so... at least $0.465 per share. Although, EAR really is surrounded by other players, that may stand their ground to NST in a bidding war. Not that I am buying in for the T/O, just being aware of what I think has a decent chance of happening.
NST hold 19.19%, they have room to buy another 3.9m shares before going over the cap.
I really do think that in a relatively short period of time EAR will have a reserve of over 1m ounces. Their drilling results to date have been excellent and they have so many targets and infill to work on.
NST have proven to be very patient players, yet... just gut feel, it seems different with EAR, they acted very quickly to get the 19%, that to me shows that EAR just jumped to the top of their list for increasing their production profile (non-internal growth). We will see of course.
EAR Price at posting:
27.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
