Minefinders (MFN) (MFL.to): Would you buy a used car from the man that guides forward production at this underachiever?

Minefinders (MFN) (MFL.to) released its 2q10 results after the bell today and guess what? Yep, they sucked again. The NR, numbers and fun can be found here, but what MFN failed to do once again is pass Rule One™ for a producing gold miner in commercial production yet again, i.e. it failed to make a profit.

Here's the count since the company started commercially at the Dolores (English translation = "pains"...quite apt, really) and we see that in the five quarters of commercial production so far, MFN has managed to return a profit just once:

All that and record gold prices too, which is pretty pathetic. The biggest problem at MFN is the tendency it has for OPUD (over-promise, under-deliver) which is summed up in these next two tables, the first for gold production and the second for silver production. What you see here are the guidances the company has made for the second half of 2009, the first half of 2010 and the second half of 2010 that's to come. For the record the 2h09 guidance is taken from the company's 2q09 MD&A and the 2010 guidances are from the 2009 year-end report and MD&A and they're all available on SEDAR if you don't believe me.

Minefinders (MFN) Au prod vs previous MFN guidance, six month periods
gold	guidance*	result	comment
2h09	50,000 to 60,000	39,759	fail
1h10	36,000 to 40,000	32,561	fail
2q10	55,000 to 60,500	?	buy used car?
*2h09 guidance from 2q09 md&a, 2010 guidance from YE09 md&a
Minefinders (MFN) Ag prod vs previous MFN guidance, six month periods
silver	guidance*	result	comment
2h09	1,200,000 to 1,300,000	615,870	fail
1h10	680,000 to 765,000	522,233	fail
2q10	1,650,000 to 1,830,000	?	boy cry wolf?
*2h09 guidance from 2q09 md&a, 2010 guidance from YE09 md&a

Each and every time, MFN has promised the market more than it was able to deliver. In the case of gold, over the 12 months MFN has produced 72,320 oz Au, which is 13,680 ounces less than even its minimum guidance level. In the case of silver it's even worse, with the 1.138m ounces produced falling 740,000 ounces short of even the minimum targets.

So now MFN is guiding higher and telling the world that the higher grades being mined now will get production up to at least 55k oz Au and 1.65m oz Ag in the half year to come. The obvious question here is to ask how many more times can MFN get away with pulling the wool over the eyes of the investment community before people start calling bullshit on this operation?

Meanwhile, let's check on how the company's stock price has got on this year:

Oh dear. I wonder how MFN's paid shiller Mike Niehuser is going to explain away the MFN mediocrity this time? In the end, the name of the company itself is a bit of a giveaway. It should have stuck to finding mines, not trying to play at producer.

DYODD, dude.

CMIN-opolooza

Constitution Mining (CMIN.ob) reported last night. It was funny. But this time, instead of keeping the joke private, let's have a look at just a few of the numbers printed by this scam so far and give my constant ranting some factual evidence. By the way, what follows (and the recent set of charts on that other flea-ridden dog ECU.to) are a quick selection of the type of analysis we typically run over at The IKN Weekly on stocks, except that:

1) The analyses are far more complete in The IKN Weekly
2) We tend to look at stocks that are possible investments and not the joke end of the mining sector

So with the preamble out the way, here are a few numbers. Assets look like this:

In other words, this company pretends it has a book of fixed assets worth money (a joke in itself, as they'll never be exploited) but has nothing in the way of true worth in cash, cash equivalents etc.

Debt is already rising:

I thought about adding in the estimates for 2q10 now that the $7m convertible is signed and the Seabridge deal is about to close (apparently on May 20th, but there's a certain smell about that too). But if I did the $11m or so estimated debt would probably scare the bejeesus out of you, so let's just keep to the reported numbers.

Here's working capital:

These people are running a big game of Stone Soup, no more and no less. They've never had money to develop their already scammy projects and are bound to dilute soon and by a lot in order to raise a bit of cash to so their thing. According to the quarterly they need about $3.5m to get through the year. This implies that, along with this working cap deficit, they'll be trying to raise at least $5m via share sales very soon (the qtrly rules out a debt deal and makes it clear dilution is on the way) and knowing these BSsers for what they are, they'll try to raise more.

This brings us neatly to the shares out evolution.

We're already up to 78.95m at end 1q10, that number is already up to over 86m today thanks to payments on the debt deals and you can bet your sweet bippy it's going higher once the latest round of dilution is over. But even at the 1q10 shares number, this values CMIN at over $57m, a joke in itself. If you think that a company with $68,000 in cash, a silly pick-a-number made-up fixed assets value of $20m a constant working capital deficit and rising debt is worth 2.5X BV, then I'll leave our friend the owl to comment on your analytical prowess:

Otto's sez: Avoid OTC mining stocks, but if one really does appeal to you and you then invest in it without looking at its regulatory filings you deserve to lose your money through sheer stupidity. DYODD, dude.

ECU Silver (ECU.to): Another classic quarter from the GATA-pumped scamsters

Let's just do the charts and be done.

Here's the assets breakdown.

Debt next, and look at the current column moving up as those payment deadlines start coming closer.

Working capital a cool negative $9.2m!!!

Shares outstanding balloon again, now at 307.3m (this doesn't even count the near 51m warrants priced avg 92c and then the 15m or so options)

And yes....of course...for all the fanfare and lah lah about better production numbers we have to suffer from these jokers non-stop, it's yet another net loss, this time $1.852m

And let's note that it would have been worse but for the $802k forex gain booked by the company. But the thing is with net losses at ECU.to is that it never stops the scumbags running the show from doling out more stock based compensations to themselves. This quarter saw another $266,000 sent to the ECU great and good via that channel. Oh, and then there are the forward sales on as-yet undelivered metal. These guys are so hand-to-mouth it's cringeworthy and the countdown to next dilutive financing is now reaching its climax.

Minera Andes (MAI.to): A thought on its last quarter

This is the kind of stuff that goes on in the Weekly sometimes, but as we dropped Minera Andes (MAI.to) from coverage a few weeks ago (at about the same time the Zeds over at the can of corn started pumping it, in fact) here's a little blog rundown of MAI's latest set of production numbers for San José, out last week. It should be remembered that MAI holds 49% of San José (the other 51% held by Hochchild (HOC.L)) so apart from the last chart, all the numbers are pro-rata for Minera.

This chart shows the evolution of throughput tonnages at San José, and as we can see the quarter well sucked.

The plant is built to run at 1,500 tonnes per day (tpd) which would mean that in a perfect world, the 92 days of the last quarter would have seen 138,000t crushed and processed and what-have-you. In the end, throughput totalled just 100,460t. San José was on strike for 15 days in 4q09 and that explains quite a lot of the underperformance, but the company also suffered a reported 8 day strike in 3q09. So if you do the math you find that on the days San José wasn't on strike in 3q09, it ran the machine at 1,456tpd but on the days San José wasn't on strike in 4q09 the average thoughput was much lower at 1,304tpd. That's not so good and therefore there must be other reasons (as yet undisclosed by MAI) as to why tonnage throughput was so low in 4q09.

This chart shows production and sales of silver in the four quarters of 2009. Unsurprisingly after noting throughput tonnages, Ag production sucked.

But also, you'll note that in the last couple of reported quarters silver sales were higher than production, this because San José had a whole chunk of unsold inventory that helped boost sales. It doesn't have that luxury any longer and so the drop in sales between 3q09 and 4q09 is a very hefty 794,000oz

This chart shows production and sales of gold in the four quarters of 2009. Again, that production drop is one thing, but the drop in sales is even heavier and in 4q09 San José sold 8,910oz less than in 3q09 due to the end of the inventory sales.

However on a comparative basis gold production held up better than silver in the last quarter because the ore was better grading, as this chart shows.

As for financial results, MAI is going to get away with a lot of this production disappointment because both gold and silver spot prices were much higher in 4q09 compared to the previous qtr. This chart shows how revenues have been and makes a forecast for the reveneus from San José that are due to MAI. Be clear that this is not predicting the MAI profit, but the amount of cash MAI will receive from San José. MAi has all its own operations to pay for as well.

So this quick, dirty and patchy analysis of San José is done. It had a bad quarter and the results are very unlikely to impress the market, folks. All in all (and even though it went higher after we dropped the stock) I'm happy that it's not part of the 'Stocks to Follow' list any longer. Once the debt is paid down at San José and the opertaion is running more smoothly, it might be worth a revisit. Not until then, though.

Caption Competition: The Results!

I got there about three days late, but here we go. Upcoming are the top three responses to our fabbylice caption competition of Thursday, featuring Twobreakfasts, H-man, smiles and a 14-pounder.

Thrilling third prize goes to bashful (!) Bina for this entry:

Super Second is reader MP, who came up with:
Ooooh..bit political there, MP...bit political.

But the wunderbar winner is reader BT, who wowed the judges (errr...me) with this superduper entry, beating out the others with shining wit and a extra layer of happiness.

Reader BT wins ....errrr....waddya want, dude?

The Bank Stress Test Report Official Results and Link

I persnally don't care, neither does the dude who sent me the link (thanks 'R') But I know some of you do out there, so by way of public service here's the link to the official Federal Reserve Board PDF report on the bank stress tests, as published a couple of minutes ago.

enjoy

Wrapping up the World Cup qualifiers

I didn't want to overdose the blog with soccer posts during the working week, so this is the belated post to wrap up what happened with the South American World Cup qualifiers on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Firstly the bets. True to form (and proving that Saturday's 2 from 2 really was the fluke I said it was) we flunked on both wagers. Chile held Uruguay to a 0-0 draw (I bet Chile) and Venezuela whupped Colombia 2-0 (I bet the draw) so the IKN virtual cash hoard is now down to $141 for the next round. And again, a reminder that thse bets are only theoretical and you'd be stone mad to follow me with real money on these (proved in style on Wednesday).

The real shocker was Argentina being hammered 6-1 by Bolivia (see all the goals here). Paraguay's point away from home at Ecuador puts them all but guaranteed for the finals. Brazil surprised nobody by beating Peru 3-0. Peru has managed to lose seven of its 12 matches now. Truly abysmal.

So the next two rounds are due June 6th to June 10th. Hasta la vista, baby.