June 03, 2008
Crew Gold Plays Hard To Get And Its Strategy Is Difficult to Understand
....
Crew doesn’t make life easy for itself by having three small operations
in very different and distant parts of the world. Gold mines in
Greenland, Guinea and the Philippines don’t provide a lot of scope of
synergy and cost cutting. The market has taken a rather cautious view
of this portfolio over the last year marking the shares down from
C$2.20 to C$1.51 but that still leaves it capitalised at C$700million.
That is quite a price tag for a company that reported a net loss of
C$27million for the quarter to end March 2008. Part of the reason for
the loss is that the company is operating at way below its planned rate
of 550,000 ounces a year.
....
Overall, Crew does seem a rather strange collection of sub-optimal gold
assets
, but maybe there is an overall grand strategy lurking somewhere
in the boardroom. It would be good if it told shareholders what it was.