Latin Mines

IntroductionI thought I'd ramble awhile about valuing optionality for royalty companies. I've done it three times where we bought something for $2 million worth a billion dollars. -Pierre Lassonde, Co-Founder of Franco NevadaThat is a 500x return, not 500%, 50,000%.  Once is a fluke, twice is lucky.  Three times,

It's worth talking about why I'm writing this.   November 21, 2022 Premium Nickel Resource, in which I have a long position, announced a CAD$7m bridge loan.   Premium Nickel Resources Ltd. Announces CAD $7 Million Bridge Loan | Premium Nickel Resources Ltd.Premium Nickel Resources Ltd.The previous day $PNRL.V

I'm going to start out by saying that I am not actually a lithium expert, I'm just a natural resource investor who has been trying to separate the wheat from the chaff in this lithium bubble market.  So a lot of this will be a little wrong, do your own

I have a plea to CEOs of public companies, and especially royalty companies.  Quit assuming your investors are idiots.   If you assume your investors are idiots your company will start doing things that don't make sense in the name of pleasing shareholders.  I'd like to offer an alternative: do the

The Koala posted a nice blog post on Lithium drawing comparisons to Iron Ore 20 years ago.  I thought it was great and that I'd add a few thoughts of my own. Lithium Today is Iron Ore Twenty Years AgoHistory doesn’t repeat itself, but it often rhymes – Mark TwainYellow

I do note these regularities, bad practices so common they are normal, for potential investments.  If there's a worm or two in an apple I might cut it off and decide the apple is still worth eating, but if the whole apple is full of worms I throw it out.

OverviewI used to play soccer back in school and one of the first things they teach you is to pass the ball not to where the person is now, but to where they are going to be.  Electric Royalties is in the bootstrapping stage.  It would be easy to look

Incoherent RamblingI've been stuck at home with covid and thought what a great excuse to write about the idea that prospect generators are really just cost of capital arbitrage.  This way if anyone asks I can just say, "Oh that must have been the covid talking, I was so delirious,

You might wonder what do tech companies and mining have in common?  It turns out the answer is that investments at early stages in both follow what is called a power law. Power Laws vs Other DistributionsIn a normal distribution, also known as a Gaussian distribution things tend to cluster

IntroductionI'm want to be long cheap electrons.  I think First Solar is the cheapest source of cheap electrons. First Solar is a technologically differentiated company with decades of growth ahead of it.  It is also the only non-Chinese solar panel manufacturer still standing, which allows it to price its panels

With the change in the Queensland Coal Royalty scheme I thought it would be worth trying to put a value on Anglo Pacific Group. OverviewBased on a closing price of 152.00 $APF.L has a market cap of $337.77m GPB.  Add in debt and it has an enterprise

Let's talk about one of my portfolio misses.  Aurania $ARU.V . The one year price chart on Aurania is -76%, my position is -79% from my cost basis of C$3.24 now trading at C$0.67.  It's been a tough year for the junior mining sector, the $GDXJ

Francis MacDonald of Kenorland recently did a great talk about exploration generally and project generation in particular.   I think this video is important enough that I'm going to do a timestamped discussion of it.  These are basically just me sharing my personal notes.  Before I jump in it's worth saying

Trident is a diversified royalties company that doesn't just focus on gold & silver.  It does have gold, but it also has Copper, Iron Ore, and Lithium.  It trades on the LSE and has a market cap of around 145m GBP, which is around $188m USD. There's only 22 assets.

DisclaimerI normally post the disclaimer at the end of articles.  This time I'll start up front and say this is a current position I am long having purchased in the open market with my own money.  I have in no way been compensated for writing this, but I am talking

It's confession time.  I owned Great Bear Resources stock and I sold it before the acquisition was announced.  I thought the project was fairly valued and recycled my money elsewhere. Barrick also apparently tried to buy them without paying a premium to the market price. What I missed is that

The latin mines blog automatically sends out emails when a new blog post like this one is published.  I've also started a couple of pages on the website that I will be updating semi-regularly that won't get an email when they are updated, because you value your inbox and I'm

This is a email subscriber only post as a way of thanks for letting me clutter up your inbox.  Together with the public How To Not Lose Your Shirt Invseting In Mining I think these two posts could have the biggest impact on your mining portfolio of all the posts

A lot of prospect generators will talk about partner funded exploration.  For example here's Orogen Royalties (a prospect generator) talking about partner funded exploration of $3.2 million in 2021. Orogen Project Generation Business Unit Update - News | OrogenOrogenSo, what do we do with that information?   Rick Rule has stated

EMX started as Eurasian Minerals Exploration or somesuch.  They were a prospect generator that has been around a long time.  In that time they have acquired a LOT of royalties.  I'll run down their more advanced assets, but it's worth noting they continue to generate royalties, selling 80 projects from

Thanks For ReadingThis blog, and my twitter account  is me learning in public.  It's embarrassing.  I've published 23 posts in just over a year.  It's not a coherent theme. I started out being really interested in Ecuador because I thought it presented a uniquely good investment opportunity.  Ecuador still does

With junior exploration companies you should be aware of the capital structure and timing before investing.  Before investing you should know any stock holds as well as options/warrants outstanding. In this article I'll attempt to break the impact of these down in terms of market flows and value distribution.

Royalty companies, prospect generators, exploration companies, and even established mining companies all are likely to participate in option agreements at some point.   I'm going to argue that if you are optioning off your project to another company that the 100% earn in with a retained royalty is almost always going

Royalty companies are at their core a kind of specialty finance.  Like a bank they have a cost for the money they use to acquire or originate royalties.   Imagine two theoretical simplified royalty companies, F and E.  F is large with lots of assets many of which produce a steady