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Monsieurs et Madames,
Thank-you for this opportunity to address you at this Silver Symposium, and particularly thanks to Mr. Bernard Siou and to my dear friend, Mr. Eric LeMaire, for once again organizing this fine event. Please forgive my English; you would not forgive my French.
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As I said, I come from the silver district in the northwestern United States known as the Coeur d’Alene Mining District. We are located in the top northeastern corner of Idaho, near the borders with Canada and Montana. On a recorded basis, silver production from this district is greater than those of the more famous districts, i.e. Durango, Mexico; or Potosi, Bolivia. Silver production from just one of our district’s mines, the Sunshine Mine, has at 300 million ounces exceeded, since 1884, the entire recorded output of the legendary Comstock Lode in Nevada. We have the largest and the deepest silver mines in the Western Hemisphere.
Our silver veins, because they tend to run vertically and appear to improve in grade as they deepen, offer promise for at least another century south of the Osburn Fault. The Lucky Friday Mine owned by Hecla, for example, is planning 15 years out to be mining at a depth of 3,000 meters; they are currently mining silver at 2,000 meters depth. There may be at least another 1 billion ounces of silver available to be mined south of the Osburn Fault which bisects our district. And there is new promise in the relatively unexplored area north of the Osburn Fault, where a silver structure similar to that being mined at Bunker Hill, Sunshine, Coeur, Galena and Lucky Friday mines is now thought to exist.
Silver deposition in the Coeur d’Alene District occurred prior to the subsequent faulting, when the real estate north of the fault shifted, slid, some 15 kilometers. So such famous veins as the Yankee Girl, the Silver Vein, the Syndicate Vein, the Chester, the Metropolitan, may continue, dislocated, on the north side of this fault – perhaps as prolific as their counterparts to the south.
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I try to evaluate a property from its operations potential. People talk about ounces, or grams, of this or that, but the reality is, mining companies mine tonnes. So the first question is, how much is one of their tonnes worth? And second, what does it cost to get this tonne out of the ground and to market. Now, when we are considering what a tonne of ore is worth, have we factored in what the smelter is actually going to pay for it? Let’s say a tonne contains 20 ounces of silver. At $10 silver, the gross value of that tonne is $200. But the smelter is not going to pay the miner $200 for that tonne. The smelterman is first going to claim there’s only 19 ounces per tonne and that your tonne is 60 pounds light and then, depending on the country and feed demand, he will only pay the mine somewhere between two-thirds and nine-tenths of the value of the silver contained. So you need to do a little arithmetic. What will be the net, net profit of that tonne, after mining, milling, shipping and smelting costs are deducted? And how many tonnes per day is the miner expecting to produce? Multiply that times the number of working days per year that the mine’s mill is running, divide that figure by the number of shares outstanding, and you can derive a pretty decent price to earnings ratio for that company. And what are they doing with these earnings? They had better be exploring for and developing new reserves at least 3 to 5 years out, for without these new reserves, the mine will soon founder.
But there are other factors, too. How about the metallurgy of the ore? Is it a simple sulfide, easy to mill? Or is it complex, sulfides mixed with oxides for example – more difficult to process. Are there high levels of arsenic, mercury, or other undesirables that the smelter will charge you to remove? How about the mine’s mill-tailings? What do they contain? Can they be removed and stored in an environmentally sound fashion? Or perhaps, are they themselves commercially valuable as a reagent to some other environmental problem nearby. I’ll give you a quick example. In Northwestern Quebec, Canada, where by the way you can’t smoke in a restaurant any more, (would you please send a Lafayette to their rescue?) a mining company will begin producing a pH positive tailings, which it then proposes, with support from the province, to place on top of an acidic tailings pile that currently is posing an environmental problem. One will neutralize the other, to the benefit of the province, the mining company, and to the environment.
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The NGOs are quite busy there, whipping up fears amongst ignorant villagers against the prospect of mining, when in fact a properly run mine could enrich their lives, bring education, literacy, electricity, and better health to their communities. I would not put too much stock in a company proposing to mine in those regions. Nor would I in places like Bolivia, where nationalization of the mining industry seems almost a certainty a year or two from now, and I question the wisdom of companies like Apex Silver and Coeur d’Alene Mines for risking their futures on that country. I would rather have a marginal mine in Idaho, Northwestern Quebec, Mexico, or Peru or Argentina or China, than a King Solomon’s treasure buried in Montana, British Columbia, Central America, Bolivia or Malaysia. Your odds are much better when the country wants you, and is willing to send the NGOs packing.
Now, what is the company’s track record? It is a truism that good managers can make profit from a marginal property, whereby poor managers can ruin a mother lode. The mining industry’s history is littered with anecdotes bearing this out and I will not belabour them. And I guess this is where I come in. When I visit a property, I spend as much time looking over the people involved as I do studying their diamond drill results. How are the managers getting along with their workers? How are their relations with the local, provincial and national government? Who is the management? Is it all lawyers and MBAs, or are there engineers and geologists in the decision-making loop? Now, I will concede that an engineer can mess things up as well as an MBA, and you need business acumen in your inner circle, but if there aren’t technical people on the top tier of management, people who know rocks and how to build mines and mills, then I would be very cautious.
Lastly, what are your own goals? Are you in for the long haul? Is this a stock you want your grandchildren to own? Or are you looking for a large near-term appreciation on the order of two to five years? Fortunately, the silver mining industry offers both. The greatest gains will of course come from the junior explorers, but there also is the greatest risk. A few of them will strike it rich; most will flash briefly, then go away. The long-term players will be around another century or two, but their price behaviour will be considerably more boring. But you can stick them in a shoe-box in your basement and forget about them until or unless you need some money.
I have not touched on the future of the price of silver, for the simple reason that I don’t know what it’s going to do and neither does anybody else, nor will I embellish on Eric’s fine presentation earlier today. I could give you the standard Vancouver pep-talk, that it is going sky-high but I could not do it sincerely. I’m actually quite satisfied with the price of silver where it is right now; it would take a very special sort of mining company not to be able to profit at $12 silver, or $10 silver, or even $8.
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17 Stücke oder so bei einem Kauf im Juni zugeteilt bekommen. 
Ist mir nur ein mal passiert, gottseidank, aber: dieser "Trade" wurde auch nirgends angezeigt. ...