When it comes to sellside brokerage commentary on quarterlies from mining companies
- There’s the trumpeting of good numbers from the rooftops (typical)
- There’s being honest about poor company performances (vanishingly rare)
- There’s lipsticking the pigs (often)
- And then there’s Detour Gold (DGC.to)
Whatever production number it does, however delayed the ramp-up, no matter how poorly the financial quarter comes in compared to estimates and expectations, DGC always but always gets a free pass from the brokerages who scramble to find the silver lining in any given quarterly and then stick it front and centre in their write-up. This time around it’s “Yeah we know that A, B, C, D, E and F weren’t great, but look at that wonderful March throughput everybody!” Fappity fap fap fap.
And the only thing they’ll ever say about the balance sheet is that “it’s improving”, which it might be on a drop-in-a-bucket level but it’s the real story here, the elephant in the room: The whole of the Canadian mining sector is staring at that half billion 2017 convertible debt repayment and shitting itself. So their lapdog anal ysts stare quietly at the number in the comfort of their own cubicles but daren’t ever mention it, even though the clock has started to tick more loudly.