Index updates, Top 10 financings, Presentations, Partner updates and much more …
The Oreninc Index rose marginally for the week ending October 10, 2013. Bought dollars announced rose to its highest level since January to $99.6m and total dollars announced rose to $151.5m, matching the total from two weeks ago. Both of these numbers are largely due to the Twin Butte Energy deal and while they are promising, the Index continued to hardly move due to the bottom end of the financing market still dragging.
The Oreninc Index remained flat for the week ending October 3, 2013. Total dollars fell to $79.8m, with an average deal size of $2.4m. Even with the drop in total dollars, broker activity increased sharply to $60.5m on four deals. After a summer of wild fluctuation, this period of relative consistency is a mild surprise. It’s hard to imagine it sticking around, with 2013’s trademark volatility likely to return before we enter back into any sort of real stability.
The Oreninc Index held steady for the week ending September 26, 2013. While total dollars fell to $149.2m, it marks the first time since January that two consecutive weeks have had over $100m announced. Broker activity dropped to $23.5m announced on three deals. This week continues the trend of one major deal bolstering the Index and accounting for a lot of its performance. Even so, the fact that two consecutive weeks have performed well shows us some consistency that has been lacking in recent memory.
We went from a period of complete market correlation, where everything traded up and down on the same issues, to the current market where nothing makes much sense.
Exhibit A: Freight rates have gone up 4-8 times for iron ore vessels over the last year and BHP/Rio/Vale are shipping lots of iron ore and getting good prices for it. At the same time, Vale is trading for $16 per share (which is a stupid-low price for that amount of profit) and iron ore juniors are trading for even less. Clearly, the freight rate got the message and someone is demanding ore, but the equity market did not get the memo.
Exhibit B: Gold juniors are trading for less than $5 per ounce of reserves, but the price of gold is still over $1,300. If gold is a storehouse of value, would it not make sense to buy it in the ground where it is nice, safe, and can wait to be mined until it is needed? Right now, gold junior prices have no connection to the actual price of gold.
The Oreninc Index jumped to a four-week high for the week ending September 19, 2013. Total dollars announced rose to $198.9m, with an average deal size of $7.95m for the week. These numbers mostly reflect three $40m-plus deals announced, but even without them average deal size would have nearly doubled compared to last week. Broker activity increased with four deals announced for $72.1m. After a more stagnant than expected first couple weeks of September, the Index seems to be showing some life as we head into Autumn even if we aren’t holding our breath.
