@EndeavourMining Q1 press release digest

$EDV Q1-2019 results as per attached. As the press release is quite lengthy, below is a quick digest.

·     Beat broker consensus across key metrics
(note that the Bloomberg consensus is incomplete)

Consensus	No. of	Production	AISC	CFPS pre-WC	Adj. EPS
	estimates	(koz)	($/oz)	($/sh)	($/sh)
Bloomberg	5	112	n.a.	$0.36	$(0.05)
Company Surveyed	11	110	$970	$0.39	$(0.08)
Actual		121	$877	$0.44	$(0.04)
Beat / Miss		Beat	Beat	Beat	Beat

›         The production beat vs. consensus was driven by a slightly better than expected performance across operating mines and the earlier than expected first pour gold at Ity CIL

›         The AISC beat vs. consensus was largely driven by a beat at Agbaou while Hounde and Karma were within 5% of consensus

›         Q1-2019 production decreased and AISC increased over the record Q4-2018 (as anticipated) due to: 1) the Ity heap leach operation ceased in 2018 ahead of the CIL commissioning and 2) the group strategically fed ῀30% of total mill feed from low-grade stockpiles (in line with the previously announced focus on reducing working capital), allowing for an increase in waste capitalization activities which is expected to give rise to higher grades in the upcoming quarters.

·     Well positioned to meet full year 2019 production and AISC guidance

#Venezuela-#Turkey #Gold for Food Trading Scheme hides many stories

Retrofitted criminal networks are being used to trade gold for the subsidized food rations that's propping up the regime.

Good piece from Bloomberg on the criminal alliance between the new best friends, Venezuela's Maduro and Turkey's Erdogan-and the ColombianLebanese raking in the billions along the way... As They say, My Enemy's Enemy, is My Friend...

"With the coup attempt," Erdogan said at a news conference earlier this year, "we met Maduro. It has been a good beginning."

Maduro and Erdogan in Istanbul in October 2016.

Photographer: Kayhan Ozer/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

Within weeks of the July call, Maduro announced his first trip to Turkey. Before the end of 2016, that Turkish Airlines route between Istanbul and Caracas was inaugurated, and delegations from the two countries started crisscrossing the Atlantic to forge deals. They began to construct a secretive business network, one that could operate out of reach of financial sanctions imposed by the U.S. It would be a network that trades in two powerful currencies for Venezuela: gold and food.

Maduro was saddled with a near-worthless currency, the bolívar, that had been bludgeoned by years of hyperinflation. Profits from his country's massive oil reserves, which had funded the Venezuelan government for decades, were evaporating because of falling prices, a neglected and crumbling infrastructure, rampant corruption, and international isolation. Venezuelans were starving, and Maduro's approval rating had plummeted. So he grasped a financial lifeline in gold, one of the only resources of value he had left.

In August 2016, Maduro announced that a state mining company called Minerven would be the sole official gold buyer in the vast tracts of jungle, savanna, and rolling hills where mining had long been clandestine and unregulated—essentially legalizing a business lorded over by murderous gangs. He sent in troops to force miners to comply and began hoovering up ore from open-pit mines. (Through a spokesman, Victor Cano, the mining minister, declined to comment for this story.) Maduro also started cashing in on the billions of dollars' worth of gold bars that Chávez, who was loath to invest in U.S. dollars, had stockpiled. The sell-off carried hints of desperation. According to sources in Venezuela's central bank, the government secretly sold the bank's massive collection of rare gold coins, dating to the 18th century. The coins, box upon box of them, were thrown together in a single 30-ton sale in late 2017, and Venezuela accepted a price based on their weight alone, not their collectible value.

With #SouthAfrica’s GDP/person lower than in 2013, #Ramaphosa faces a daunting task if he wins May’s #election

#Zuma's presidency cost #SouthAfrica 1.1trn rand ($78bn) in GDP, 300bn rand in taxes, and more than 1m jobs.

From The Economist

South Africa is a better place to live than in 1994. A liberal constitution protects the rights of all citizens, no matter their race. The poor have more of their basic needs met. The share of households without electricity fell from 42% in 1996 to 10% in 2016, while the fraction going hungry has plummeted. Blacks make up 50% of the country's middle class, according to recent research. This is much lower than their overall share of the population (80%) but it is a sign of uneven progress. Black South Africans now account for more sales of suburban homes than whites do.

Most South Africans believe that race relations are better today than they were in 1994. A survey published in 2016 by the Institute of Race Relations (irr), a think-tank, found that 54% of respondents felt relations were better than a generation ago, with 22% saying they had stayed the same, and 20% believing they had worsened. According to the same study, just 5% of South Africans said "racism" was the biggest issue facing the country.

...

That is the good news. The bad news is that most of the progress made since 1994 came before 2009. It was then that Jacob Zuma began his nine-year reign as president, during which time the thuggish kleptocrat and his cronies ransacked state-owned enterprises (soes), plundered local and provincial governments, and ravaged the law-enforcement institutions set up to curb such looting. The corruption of the ruling African National Congress (anc) predated Mr Zuma, and is outlasting him, but it was the former president who took venality to stratospheric levels.

The Zuma administration also ran the economy into the ground while ramping up public spending. The ratio of debt to gdp rose from 26% in 2008-9 to 56% in 2018-19. gdp per person is lower than it was in 2013. Analysis by Standard Bank suggests that, relative to the trajectory the country was on before Mr Zuma became president, his regime lost South Africa 1.1trn rand ($78bn) in gdp, 300bn rand in taxes, and more than 1m jobs.

The damage of the Zuma years extends beyond the economy. In a deeply unequal society with a violent past, a sense of mutual obligation is especially important. Yet, though South Africa has some of the largest mineral reserves on the planet, the commodity it needs most—trust—is in short supply.

Read the whole article here: https://www.economist.com/special-report/2019/04/25/cyril-ramaphosa-faces-a-daunting-task-if-he-wins-south-africas-election

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