It’s around this time that mining companies realize you can’t have your cake and eat it:
Vancouver, British Columbia–(Newsfile Corp. – March 3, 2020) – Bear
Creek Mining Corporation (TSXV: BCM) (BVL: BCM) (“Bear Creek” or the
“Company”) announces that it has engaged BNP Paribas and Société
Générale as Joint Lead Arrangers (together, the “JLAs”) to arrange a US$
400 million senior secured credit facility (the “Facility”). The
Facility, if concluded, will be used to develop the Company’s wholly
owned and fully permitted, world-class Corani silver-lead-zinc project
located in the Puno region of Peru. The JLAs will use commercially
reasonable best efforts to arrange the Facility with a syndicate of
banks and financial institutions.
In other words, while the world knows that silver is $17/oz, zinc $0.90/lb and the price financiers charge mining companies for capex cash rarely drops below 15% these days, Bear Creek Mining expects to raise U$400m on a project that uses U$18/oz silver and U$1.10/lb zinc for its economics (Ag and Zn are the big revenue generators) and also assumes the world will lend them the money at a 5% cost of capital.
Good luck with that.