Central Asia Live Discussion

II Editor 30 Aug 2017

NEW ARTICLE: 10 of AIM's best income plays "Dividend cuts by the UK's largest companies are rare. Yet the recent slicing of payouts by the likes of LSEFGrovident Financial, LSE:ADM:Admiral and LSESONearson prove that they do happen from time to time. It's a reminder for dividend ..."[link]

charlie51 30 Aug 2017

Re: A Lot to Like Certainly is, but the trend looks good to me...

jaytee41 30 Aug 2017

Re: A Lot to Like It's having a bit of a yo yo ride at the moment isn't it ?

charlie51 30 Aug 2017

A Lot to Like With the near imminent release of H1 results there is a lot to like here imvroduction at top end of planned levelCopper price up significantly in 6 months to be reported on (circa 20%) – and rising even more just now so at start of H2.. Most indicators suggest that will be sustained. Good geared play on price of copper.Largely fixed costsReports in £ - yet selling in $. Big currency favour.Big and rising cash balance.Great past returns to shareholders on dividend front so should see significant uplift here – unless put to one side for acquisitions.Upgrade to finnCap forecasts must be in prospect whose last update (5 July when price was 213p) saidroduction update – BUY Target Price 290p.Central Asia Metals has released results for the quarter and half year to 30 June 2017. Quarterly copper production was in line with last year at 3,670 tonnes (3,701 tonnes) and on a half-year basis, production was up 2% at 7,027 tonnes with sales up 8% at 6,870 tonnes. The company has reiterated production guidance for the year of between 13,000 and 14,000 tonnes. The Stage 2 Expansion project has now been commissioned and has started producing copper. We reiterate our 290p price target and Buy recommendation. At the end of June the company had US$41.7m of cash and no debt. The stock is currently yielding a healthy 7.6%; we expect this to grow. Geological exploration work has started at the Shuak project, also in Kazakhstan. The 2017 diamond drilling programme of approximately 4,700 metres has recently commenced, together with an initial 7,000 metre core hydrotransport (CHT) drilling campaign. In total, 22,000 metres of drilling are planned for 2017.

roco200 28 Aug 2017

Courtesy Penhome - Chart etc. This looks to be as if it is at a key level. So far its price is not reflecting the rise in Copper futures in 2017. A confirmed break above the clear resistance line in the mid 240s is the key signal here - I'm looking for closes above 250.[link] Asia Metals PLC is a copper producer. The company's main revenue driver is a solvent extraction and electro-winning (SX-EW) plant in Kazakhstan that produces copper cathode. This product is then distributed to end customers, which are predominantly in Turkey. In addition to this plant, the group also has operations in Chile and is continuously evaluating other acquisition opportunities. In terms of strategy, the company aims to minimize debt and provide a dependable dividend to shareholders"Mk cap £265m with 111m shares in issue. 2016 T/O £49.4m with EBIT of £24.4m. Consistently profitable with £32m cash in bank at end 2016. No debt. Dividend payer since 2012 with 15.5p paid in 2016 which gave a yield of around 6.5%.

charlie51 22 Aug 2017

ANTO Interesting to see how a rising copper price is reflected in results - CAML's next trading update should be a convincing one...Antofagasta Plc (ANTO.L) Announced, in its interim results for the six months ended 30 June 2017, that its reported revenue stood at $2049.2 million, compared to $1444.2 million in the preceding year. Profit after tax was $454.6 million compared to $158.5 million. The company's basic earnings per share was 29.5c, compared to 8.9c. The company declared an interim dividend of 10.3c per share compared to 3.1c in the comparable period.

JStandMick 21 Aug 2017

Re: Comment from Gary Newman on ADVFN Gary Newman???Are friends electric and Cars.It's a sign I tell you. Allegedly 80 kg's of copper needed in every electric car. Always thought the 80's electro popster was ahead of his time.Mick

charlie51 21 Aug 2017

Comment from Gary Newman on ADVFN This might be of interest..(I do hold CAML)Central Asia Metals is probably the most under-valued commodity play on the market says Gary NewmanThere are times when a large background seller can present a good buying opportunity, and an institutional investor offloading shares isn’t always a sign that the company is failing to perform. I believe that is very much the case with Central Asia Metals (LSE:CAML), a company which has been a favourite of mine for sometime now, and given the recent move in copper to close to the $3/lb area, hitting 2017 highs, I can see a lot of upside still to come as long as that strength in the commodity price remains.Recently we have seen reduced holdings notifications from two funds – D&A Income and FIL – and that has certainly been dragging on the price, as this AIM listed Kazakhstan-based producer tends to have fairly low levels of liquidity in general, although lately there have been higher than usual daily volumes traded. It is always hard to know exactly why these funds are selling – often it is nothing specific to the company itself – and I have seen plenty of instances where the share price has subsequently risen significantly higher. Personally I have taken the opportunity to add more shares at around the 220p area, as I am still bullish on copper in the medium to long term, and think that the company is significantly under-valued – I recently covered it a buy here at a 207p share price.This week we have seen the share price move back up into the mid 230p range, ending the week at 234p, but I think that is just the start and there is plenty more to come when we look at the fundamentals/financials. The company remains amongst the lowest cost producers in the world, having reduced its C1 cash cost of production to just $0.43/lb by the end of 2016 – although obviously the all-in sustaining cost is higher. Production currently comes from its Kounrad Dumps, and production is expected to remain steady over the next 15 years or so, especially with the Western Dumps now online as well, and production guidance is set at 13,000 to 14,000 tonnes for 2017, which is comparable to the 2016 output of 14,020 tonnes.The most recent financials were for the full year up to December 31 2016, and they showed that the company made a net profit of $26.2 million – not bad for a company with a market cap of just £261 million and with $41.7 million in the bank and no debt, as at June 30 2017. That gives a PE ratio of just over 11, which is very low for this type of company, not to mention the fact that we are also seeing growth. On top of that it paid out a dividend of 15.5p for 2016, which equates to a yield of around 6.6% at the current share price, and I would expect that to be higher for the full year 2017. My reasoning for thinking that the company now looks even cheaper than it has done previously is that during 2016 it achieved gross revenue of $69.3 million from copper sales of just under 14,000 tonnes. That equates to an average realized price of just $2.26/lb, as compared to a current spot price of around $2.95/lb, as I write this piece.Even if we take the lower end of guidance for 2017 – which would be 13,000 tonnes – then if the copper price was to stay at current levels it would result in an extra $20 million per annum in pre-tax profit (assuming the costs of running the business remain fairly constant). On top of the production from Kounrad, there is also significant upside potential from the recently acquired 80% stake that the company now has in Shuak, where a drilling programme is underway to assess the potential of the estimated copper-in-place of 327,000 tonnes. Unless I am missing something, then I fail to see much downside from the current share price, barring a collapse in copper, and view this as one of the most under-valued producers out there.

Greyinvestor 08 Aug 2017

First purchase Made a first purchase of these today @ £2.20, should have bought earlier.......

r21442 04 Aug 2017

Tipped in IC todY Resources stocks are not designed to be reliable, utility-like investments. The prize – and substantial risk – of exposure to commodities’ inherent volatility is leverage. Buy at the right time, and few asset classes or sectors can match the gains. Conversely, investors who have watched the miners’ share price convulsions in recent years might be tempted to avoid the sector entirely. But for readers taking this latter course, we'd suggest pondering copper producer Central Asia Metals (CAML), one of Aim’s gems, and the closest thing to a bond proxy you will find among mining equities.Central Asia is a uniquely profitable operation, thanks to its ownership of the long-life, low-cost Kounrad plant in Kazakhstan, which recovers copper from dumps accumulated from a Soviet-era open-pit mine. Using leaching and a process known as solvent extraction-electrowinning (SX-EW), the company converts copper oxides and low-grade sulphides into A-grade copper cathode. This leads to extraordinary margins. Last year, Kounrad generated cash profit of $51.3m (£39.5m), on post-offtake sales of $66.7m. On a cost-basis, onsite mining, administration and general expenses came to just 43¢ per pound of copper produced compared with an average selling price of $2.27. Throw in foreign exchange losses, and $11.4m of central costs including running a head office in London, and the group's post-tax profit came in at $26m for the year.Copper currently sells for about $2.90 a pound following a recent fillip, and has consistently traded above $2.50 in 2017. This suggests Central Asia should be doing very well at the moment. Of course, any interruption to production should worry investors, and an operational shift to Kounrad’s western dumps in the second quarter partly explains why the shares are trading below their February high of 263p. However, last month's half-year trading update, which reiterated full-year production guidance of 13,000 to 14,000 tonnes of copper cathode, suggests the dump transition happened without a hitch. Even if Central Asia hits the lower end of that guidance, investors can expect gross sales of $75m at $2.60 a pound copper.As the table below shows, broker finnCap expects better. That' good for income seekers, as Central Asia seeks to distribute at least 20 per cent of revenue to shareholders in the form of dividends. With $41.7m net cash, there’s little to reason to expect a fall in the payout in the near termInvestors who 'bet' on copper prices this year are unlikely to have bought Central Asia's shares. Larger Kazakh peer KAZ Minerals (KAZ), with its enormous borrowings and growing production, offers far more leverage to expectations of a tightening in the metal’s global supply. But unlike KAZ, or even Antofagasta (ANTO), Central Asia offers shareholder returns irrespective of the copper price, which could always dip before supply starts to fade at the end of the decade. The downside to all of this is that, with Kounrad at capacity, similarly profitable sources of new production are hard to come by. Still, a 7.8 per cent forecast dividend yield is not to be sniffed at. Buy.

machz 03 Aug 2017

CAML to thrive in Copper Bull Market Copper prices are on the up and CAML looks to be a producer which will reap signifiant rewards from the commodity's strength. Here's a recent detailed report on CAML, great for those who are still discovering the company [link]

JStandMick 27 Jul 2017

Re: Worth a punt Picked up on this recently so in today with 8k shares.Low cost producer, copper price showing signs of a breakout, cash in the bank, no debt and dividend paying. What's not to like?Oh, and a quiet BB!!!Good luck all...Mick

suicidal_tendencies 04 Jul 2017

Worth a punt This has to be worth a buy right now. This from CAML's final results for 2016;"RevenueA total of 13,751 tonnes (2015: 11,750 tonnes) of copper cathode from Kounrad were sold through the Company's off-take arrangements with Traxys and a further 187 tonnes (2015: 290 tonnes) were sold locally. Total sales at Kounrad were 13,938 tonnes (2015: 12,040 tonnes) representing a 16% increase in volumes.While copper cathode sales volumes have increased during the year when compared to 2015, Group revenue was adversely impacted by the decline in copper prices. An average selling price of $4,994 per tonne was achieved in 2016 (2015: $5,336 per tonne), representing a 6% decrease in the price of copper. This generated gross revenues for the Group of $69.3 million (2015: $67.3 million)."Note, "an average selling price of $4,994 per tonne was achieved in 2016"A pound of copper has been over $2.58 all year (going on monthly average price). This equates to a price per tonne of over $5,676. This years results could be very good indeed. The half year results will also be very nice I suspect.The company stated in the Final Results that production would be between 13,000 - 14,000 tonnes.The very bottom figure - 13,000 tonnes - gives a gross revenue of about $73 million at a copper price of $5,600 (which is a conservative figure per tonne) per tonne of copper.

jaytee41 12 May 2017

Re: Ex-dividend todat Damn just got this tipped to me this morning. Missed the boat again grrr. Question - is this share on AIM ?

Welsheagle 11 May 2017

Ex-dividend todat Ex-dividend of 10p per share today, so in effect the sp is up slightly