Source: Lobo Tiggre for Streetwise Reports 09/12/2018
Lobo Tiggre of Independent Speculator discusses an attack piece by short sellers against Pretium Resources.
On Thursday, September 6, 2018, a group of short sellers called Viceroy Research published an attack piece against Pretium Resources Inc. (PVG:TSX; PVG:NYSE). The stock dropped 10% on a day when gold was up. What follows is an analysis of what was said and why it’s wrong.
FULL DISCLOSURE: I own 1,377 shares of Pretium Resources (PVG), bought at an average price of $7.26 on April 13, 2018, at 12:59 p.m.
If you think I’d sell my soul and trash my reputation to protect a $10,000 investment, then you should discount everything I’m about to say. But if you do, you should keep the same skepticism in mind when you consider Viceroy’s claims, as they admit that they were short the stock at the time they published their attack.
As of the publication date of this report, you should assume that the authors have a direct or indirect interest/position in all stocks (and/or options, swaps, and other derivative securities related to the stock) and bonds covered herein, and therefore stand to realize monetary gains in the event that the price of either declines.
At the same time, Viceroy claims to be acting in the public interest—even though they say everything in their report might be wrong.
All expressions of opinion are subject to change without notice, and we do not undertake to update or supplement any reports or any of the information, analysis and opinion contained in them. We believe that the publication of our opinions about public companies that we research is in the public interest. We are entitled to our opinions and to the right to express such opinions in a public forum. …
Any investor interested in the truth should keep this in mind.
Meanwhile, I read all 47 pages of the report, trying to be as objective as I can.
I found one issue that seemed to require clarification.
A central thesis to the attack is that Pretium used the bonanza-grade Cleopatra vein within the Valley of the Kings zone to bias the bulk sample taken in 2013.
If true, the entire project was a fraud. The company would have to be desperately scrounging around for high-grade ore now to maintain the illusion, as the short sellers claim.
Before we get into that, it’s worth nothing that management couldn’t pull off a fraud like this on their own. They couldn’t sneak down into the mine when no one was looking and take a pick to some ultra-high-grade material lying around to skew the results. It would take hundreds of employees working for several different companies to join the conspiracy. It would take even more to keep the illusion going now that the mine is in operation.
That this could happen with no leaks over the last five years is very hard to believe. It’s also contradicted by the lack of significant insider selling (apart from exercising options) that one would expect to see if management was desperately trying to cash in before the fraud is exposed. And that’s not to mention a court examination of the issue that concluded that Pretium was right.
At any rate, this is the central thesis of the short sellers’ attack. They included one of Pretium’s slides as evidence in their report. It seems to show the 2013 bulk sample selectively following the super-high-grade Cleopatra vein. Without context, this looks bad. Here is the slide the short sellers used and marked up.
The yellow areas on the map are places where material was taken for the bulk sample. Blue areas were for access and exploration. Material from the blue areas was not included in the bulk sample. Note the blue tunnel at a different angle than the rest. It follows the Cleopatra vein, which seems to curve around and get included in the only yellow area that goes east-west instead of north-south. That exceptional orientation of the area sampled sure looks suspicious… unless you know that it was planned all along, well before Cleopatra was discovered.
Below is a diagram of the planned bulk sample area, published by Pretium on August 21, 2013.
It shows the resource model blocks in green, orange, red and purple. This clearly shows Pretium’s intention to sample material from high-, low-, and no-grade areas to test its model. This was drawn before Cleopatra was discovered, which is why there are no purple blocks where we now know Cleopatra was. It’s hard to see, but the vital point is that the east-west sample area that looks so exceptional in the previous chart is already there in the plan. This next slide, from the same 08/21/2013 presentation, shows that east-west sample area more clearly.
As is clearly shown, the east-west sample was already planned. The drill traces on this slide also show some purple-coded hits that would later be seen as part of Cleopatra—but Pretium did not move the 615E sample area a bit to the east to try to capture more of this material. You can see that in the next slide taken from Pretium’s October 30, 2013, The Bulk Sample: Questions and Answers presentation. It shows the actual areas Pretium mined for its bulk sample.
This is busier than the previous slide, as it includes a lot of the underground drilling Pretium did once it got into the deposit underground. It shows all the bulk sample areas taken as planned, including the east-west zone highlighted by the short sellers—but only the eastern half of this area.
I understand that this was because the density of the rock mined for the bulk sample was higher than expected. If Pretium had …read more
From:: The Gold Report