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ALS.TO - Altius Minerals


Guest Dazel

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I bought a small position yesterday, seemed like emotional trading as all of my commodity equities dropped but the largest recovered nicely... to me that says that the stocks without much coverage will come back over the next little bit.  Uranium exposure probably hurt.

 

BTW does anyone have an idea of the potential revenues from the non Voisey Bay royalties?

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Guest Dazel

 

As we know...the market participants rarely do any homework...and in a panic everything is sold which we saw...Altius "SOLD"..."SOLD" their large Uranium deposit for a large profit $200m..but those in the market rarely care at a time of crisis. So yeah not very liquid...and a panic in company that used to hold a great deal of uranium..it was a fire sale...and still is.

we are trading at near cash levels...(assuming Alderon up 10% yesterday) is included in marketable securities..Huge amounts materials will be needed for Japan's rebuild...on top of iron ore record prices..they are in the sweet spot with Alderon..and I was impressed with their focus on their latest partnership with Cliffs..They think they have found more highly probable spots of iron ore in Labrador which already is in the view of the iron ore world...we like the opportunity.

Alderon should have their first resource estimate..in the next week or two..we expect the investor community to view this for what it is a resource company with loads of cash and no debt...they likely be viewed as an iron ore company (in the Labrador rich area) rather than it is past roots in uranium. We got crazy prices on Tuesday.

 

Dazel.

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I bought today. Figured the Uranium was the reason. Bought 25% more and may keep adding. I am simply adding to my holdings during this selloff and am buying the companies which have gone down the most.

 

Thats this and ATPG. Both appear to have material catalyst.

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I have bought as well for my tax deferred account.

 

I am thinking of adding some to my taxable account---I normally would like something I can hold for 10 years or so---do you guys think ALS.TO is something that could be held longterm? say over 10 years?...I am thinking that as a owner/jockey type of holding that it would be.

 

 

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Guest Dazel

"I have bought as well for my tax deferred account.

 

I am thinking of adding some to my taxable account---I normally would like something I can hold for 10 years or so---do you guys think ALS.TO is something that could be held longterm? say over 10 years?...I am thinking that as a owner/jockey type of holding that it would be."

 

........

If you owned for the last 10 years you would have done 32% a year...I hate to look in the rearview mirror but it is much less than half of where it was in 2007...

 

and you have many future catalysts...Alderon, NCLS, short term.

 

Dazel.

 

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest Dazel

 

I have been waiting for the 43-101 resource estimate to make more comments should be soon. We have been

picking away at these levels.

 

Dazel.

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Looks like just a standard yearly buyback program announcement. Doesn't seem to necessarily mean they will buy anything back this year only that now that they got the disclosure out of the way, they could be opportunistic at any time this year. Just seems like good standard practice and not necessarily an indication of absolute intention to buy back.

 

Don't get too excited.

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Looks like just a standard yearly buyback program announcement. Doesn't seem to necessarily mean they will buy anything back this year only that now that they got the disclosure out of the way, they could be opportunistic at any time this year. Just seems like good standard practice and not necessarily an indication of absolute intention to buy back.

 

Don't get too excited.

 

I do not get too excited. But knowing Dalton's history he must be seeing some undervaluation here.

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Excellent thread. Thanks everybody, and especially Dazel!

 

Update: Okay, I took the plunge and initiated a small position in ALS. You guys are making it very hard for me to stick to my initial game plan by having so many good ideas!  ;D

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Guest Dazel

 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Alderon-Announces-Initial-iw-998138306.html?x=0&.v=1

 

Alderon has under promissed and over delivered...their stated public goal was 400 to 500 million tonnes at grades of 28 to 30 %...their 43-101 released this morning came in at over 600 million tonnes at grades above 30%. This is extremely positive as they are now drilling for the next update expected in June 2011...Their stated goal was to bring the resource estimate to 600 to 800 million tonnes. They will be starting at the 600 million tonne estimate...

 

more later.

 

Dazel.

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wrt Alderon value, I did a real simple comparison and as Buffett says "it sort of jumped off the page" at me.

 

Neighbour Consolidated Thompson got $4.9 billion for about 990 million tonnes.  That's about $4.95 a tonne.  $4.95 x 500 million = $2.475 billion

 

Consolidated are a producing mine so I looked at the cost of building that to be around $1 billion.  Leaves $1.475 billion.

 

Then I figured that because I probably made some incorrect assumptions and would like a nice margin of safety  I'll divide that in half.  Leaves $737.5 million for 500 million tonnes. 

 

That's about 2.5x current market cap and that's when it just sort of jumped off the page!

 

Any further resource increase is just more Margin of Safety above that figure.

 

Downside is if Iron Ore tanks - who knows??  Not me, but it looks pretty good so far!

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wrt Alderon value, I did a real simple comparison and as Buffett says "it sort of jumped off the page" at me.

 

Neighbour Consolidated Thompson got $4.9 billion for about 990 million tonnes.  That's about $4.95 a tonne.  $4.95 x 500 million = $2.475 billion

 

Consolidated are a producing mine so I looked at the cost of building that to be around $1 billion.  Leaves $1.475 billion.

 

Then I figured that because I probably made some incorrect assumptions and would like a nice margin of safety  I'll divide that in half.  Leaves $737.5 million for 500 million tonnes. 

 

That's about 2.5x current market cap and that's when it just sort of jumped off the page!

 

Any further resource increase is just more Margin of Safety above that figure.

 

Downside is if Iron Ore tanks - who knows??  Not me, but it looks pretty good so far!

 

I really like the way you look at things.

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Guest Dazel

 

You guys have beat me to the punch on Alderon...you can see the excitement Altius management sees...It is early in the Alderon project but what is being missed is the 3% royalty (more on royalties later) that Altius owns in addition to it's 40% ownership of Alderon....just like Leucadia's royalty at Fortesque it was nothing and then...pure cashflow...We think that these income streams from future royalty streams are being completely ignored.

 

example: today's prices

Altius market cap    $394m 0 debt.

Alderon shares32m  $130m

cash equivalents      $200m

The company is trading for $64m...That looks like more of a financial company than a resource company does it not? That is what the market is pricing but what about the other assets?

 

 

Royalties of interest

Voisey Bay

We have asked management what it would cost them to buy another 10% stake in the Labrador Nickel Royalty limited partnership that they already own. That way we will find out

what it costs in the market. It covers the entire Voisey bay area so if Vale were to discover further resources, the Royalty rises with output...without any exploration cost. Voisey Bay is the low cost producer in the world with a massive resource base that Vale figures will operate for 30 years with out additional resource finds. After looking at what these royalties cost in the market place..we are convinced that this asset is being ignored. altius is an expert when it comes to royalties as shown by their astute purchase of IRC (International Royalty Corp in 2009) They made $31m on it in 6 months. How did they know it was undervalued? Because IRC was a major holder of the same partnership above. So what's the value?

http://www.altiusminerals.com/lab_nickel.php

 

Alderon

So what would the 3% Alderon royalty be worth if The Consolidated Thompson model is followed through. That would likely make the royalty that is being valued at less than 0 worth more than the entire market cap of Altius.

 

 

Central mineral belt

2% gross sales and 2% smelter..now owned by Paladin..

http://www.altiusminerals.com/aurora.php

                         

Cliffs Natural Resources

They purchased of Consoldidated Thompson for $5 billion...Altius signed an exploration agreement with them in December..Do you think they know Alderon is next door to Consolidated Thompson? They are a big global player. Altius does not usually do projects with large companies but this relationship can't hurt.

http://www.altiusminerals.com/cliffs_natural_resources.php

 

Having said that...

Rio Tinto partnership-Labrador Iron Ore

http://www.altiusminerals.com/labrador_iron_ore.php

 

Rio Tinto is a 58% owner of the The Iron Ore company of Canada, 26% Mitsibushi, 15% Labrador iron ore royalty(2.65b market cap) other the other owners. They have produced a billion tonnes of iron ore in the district which has been around since the 1950's..they have 2.5 billion tonnes in reserves...So they are in partnership with the big boys of the area and in contact. We assume that these players are very aware of what these properties are worth and these are the deepest pockets in the world. As discussed earlier New Millenium was taken out by Tata steel for big bucks in the same region.

 

Energy opportunities

at $105 oil this could be very interesting

http://www.altiusminerals.com/albert_oil_shale.php

 

NLRC has until October 2011 to sell or finace the refinery project..If they are able to pull off something of value here it would be huge for the stock price as the market still sees this as disasterous for Altius..they forgot to look at the other assets!

http://www.altiusminerals.com/nlrc.php

 

There are numerous other projects that I did not mention including many gold assets including Rambler that will start producing gold this quarter..but i do not know what they are worth..more than 0! We see the above projects as potentially huge for the company. Now that 43-101 is out for Alderon and it was extremely positive (we are not geologists!!) we have greater conviction that the $64 million the market is valuing this company at is crazy! As was said earlier it jumps off the page at us!

disclosure:We are very biased! and own a large chunk of Altius...

 

Dazel.

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"Alderon

So what would the 3% Alderon royalty be worth if The Consolidated Thompson model is followed through. That would likely make the royalty that is being valued at less than 0 worth more than the entire market cap of Altius."

 

I was just trying to come up with a number for the value of this royalty.  Using pretty conservative assumptions of: 1) 8MT annual production, 2) long-term $100/ton 66% iron price in Canada, 3) production starts in 2015, 4) 25 year mine life and 4) a 12% discount rate, I get a present value of around $120m today (and $190m in 2015), unless my math is wrong.  I guess for the Royalty it doesn't really matter if they follow the "CLM" model for the financing, all that matters is that the mine actually goes into production.  So, at this point, considering the location, management, low capex etc...what would you estimate the probability is that the mine doesn't go into production?  Aside from a sudden collapse in iron-ore prices and/or the economy what other event(s) would prevent development?  I am having a hard time coming up with scenarios that would stop continuing development...

 

Also, Dazel, do you have any idea what type of financing Alderon will wind up getting?  I feel like in this environment they should be getting a deal similar to or better than what CLM got with WISCO, but I really have no idea...either way, it seems like Altius will sell the shares at some point, and just keep the royalty??

 

and, yeah, if iron ore prices stay where they are now, and the mine goes into production, then in 2014 or so, the Royalty could be worth more than the entire market cap...

 

 

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