Northern Star Raises Cost Guidance as Weather & Inflation Hit

Bullish metal prices movements have contributed to a hotter than anticipated US inflation print

G’day GC #

The Pre-Start

  • Northern Star produced 401koz and finished March with net cash of $174m. Cost guidance was raised to A$1,835/oz, with the company pointing at weather & persistent cost pressures (NST)

  • Perseus has furthered its control of OreCorp, with 4 directors stepping down while two Perseus nominees were appointed to the board (ORR)

  • Polymetals flushed through higher metals prices into its project studies & stated that project financing discussions are underway (POL). We expected plenty more of this behaviour as metals prices tick higher

  • Berkeley Energia will commence international arbitration against Spain in regard to their Salamanca uranium project (BKY)

  • Core Lithium has grown its Finniss resource to 48.2Mt @ 1.26% Li2O. 58% is in the measured & indicated category (CXO)

  • Sayona beats the drum about its West Australian assets for the first time in a while - we wonder what the read-through is here… (SYA)

High Grade It

  • Tin has climbed 31% YTD and reached US$33,000/tonne as a crackdown on corruption in Indonesia has quashed exports and inventories have depleted (Mining Journal)

  • The path has been cleared for Ora Banda to progress its Wesfarmers farm-in lithium deal after a dispute with Greenstone & Riverina Resources (The West)

  • Uranium hopeful, Berkley Energia, is taking its dispute pertaining to permitting the Salamanca Project with Spain to international arbitration at ICSID (Reuters)

  • Bank of America’s Head of Commodities predicted copper to rise 30% over the next 12 months (Bloomberg)

  • US inflation data came in hotter than expected (at 3.8%), driven by a surge in the price of raw materials amongst other contributors (WSJ)

  • SQM called another investor meeting, requested by 2nd largest holder Tianqi, to provide greater clarity over a proposed deal with Codelco, as the Boric government threatens resources control (Bloomberg)

  • Optimism around iron ore has pushed the ASX to a short-term 3-day winning streak, with Rio Tinto & Fortescue leading the way (The West)

  • Foreign affairs officials haven’t ruled out prosecuting ASX-listed Russian coal producer Tigers Realm for violating Australian sanctions (AFR)

  • 2024’s iron ore price fall has left higher-cost producers sweating, with a price below US$100/t likely unviable for projects like Wiluna West (The West)

  • Top commodity traders Vitol, Trafigura & Mercuria say banks have never been so keen to lend to them, whilst dismissing IPO talks (FT)

  • Fund managers looking at gold have tipped the recent rally to continue, on the expectation of interest rate moves & geopolitical unrest (AFR)

Wheelin’ n Dealin’

  • Regarding the FIRB approval for the Gina/SQM takeover of Azure, UBS’ Sujit Dey claims “In Azure’s situation, the Chinese ownership of SQM is probably holding up the decision. If it was straightforward, the approval would have come through by now, in my view” (AFR)

Rattlin’ the Tin

  • John Borshoff led Deep Yellow wrapped up its share purchase plan, raising the targetted $30m on the back of uranium bullishness (DYL)

Word on the Decline

  • Strickland is in a trading halt pending an acquisition. Word on the Decline is the asset is in Europe… The company had $33 million cash at 31 December (STK)

In the Weeds

  • Many Australian commodities businesses are in the cross-hairs as Beijing and Canberra reset their relationship, with producers/developers of nickel, rare earth and lithium in particularly vulnerable positions (Bloomberg)

Today’s Top Tweet

Devil’s in the Detail

ASX took issue with mineral sands producer, Image Resources’ share price uptick on higher volume in the two days before the market was notified that their Atlas Project had progressed to the final stage of approvals. I’ll leave it to you to assess the reasonableness of the company’s response…

Of course the above only accounts for one day… The announcement didn’t go up until Monday, how does Image account for that?

Just another day on ASX!

Disclaimer

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