Thistle Mining: Charts & Fundamentals

Holdontight,

I did indeed email the company and got a quick response from the CEO, Andy Graetz. I did not ask about the company's relationship with the majority shareholders however.

I think he shares my views on what is needed to bring the company to life. At this stage of the company's development, it needs stability and the certainty of a more comfortable balance sheet with less debt and more secure revenues. The leverage from much higher gold prices is an issue for 2007, not 2006. So I think we will see a share issue next year, partly to reduce debt levels, though hopefully the company can delay that for a while until the sp rises. I think an RNS may come out shortly on cost issues, but I got the impression that abstracting from one-off redundancy payments ($4.5 mn announced in the Q3 report), costs per oz would be lower than $500. It will be interesting to see whether further hedging has occurred, but it is a possibility anyway once the gold price picks up again. (Remember this is a short term measure, it will not impact on revenues in the medium term, which is what the stock market will focus on should gold prices rise to anything like your projection.)