Friday, October 22, 2010

ECU Silver (ECU.to) reports 3q10 production

Interesting numbers out of ECU.to this morning, found on this NR. Gold shipments are up as expected thanks to the sale of the sulphide material and now account for the lion's share of revenues. Silver shipments were down. Here are a couple of charts.

This one shows the evolution of gold:

This one is the silver numbers

As for calculated revenues, here's what comes out.
By the way, the sharper eyes amongst you will have noticed that in the NR, ECU.to tries its usual BS tactics and quotes the latest spot prices for metals. When running our revenues calculations we've used the London PM Fix averages for the 3q10 period, which are $18.92/oz for silver and $1,227/oz for gold.

So with a calculated $8.7m in sales revenues for gold (Au the lion's share at $7.35m) and silver (we ignore the Zn and Pb credits every quarter to give us a straight line comparative) it may just be that ECU.to makes a profit this quarter, even after paying off the servicing on its heavy debt loads and the normal mining costs and G&A. We're kinda guesstimating $2m at the moment (and it's a guess, be clear), but the problem is that with 300m+ shares outstanding that would give us an EPS of 0.6c or so and a forward EPS of about 2.5c, hardly the earnings potential that will move a 70c stock. They've already diluted themselves out of real earnings growth and with a negative working cap of over $17m as at 2q10 earnings, there's a long way to go before these guys are clear of the snafu situation they dug themselves into.

It'll be interesting to see whether ECU.to rallies on this report. DYODD, as at the moment I'm neutral on  this utter dog of a silver stock, shamefully promoted by some real two-faced individuals, and will stay that way but have shorted the stock on a couple of occasions and wouldn't be afraid to do so again if it hits its 90c ceiling on wild-assed pumping. My best guess, however, it that ECU.to will not get anywhere near 90c and I'll just stay sitting on the sidelines. Laughing at them.