Yesterday evening, Minefinders (MFN) released this NR to tell the world it’s not going to make its guidelines for production for the rest of the year. Have a read yourself, but the lag centres around the company’s inability to fix the tear in the leach pad tarp the way they said they would and in the time they allotted themselves.
Toldya so. Let’s be clear about this, IKN told you that this perennial screw-up OPUD-merchant would screw it up again. Take for example this post, where we laid out our doubts and noted the madness of a company that says to the world “yeah, well…we’ve constantly missed guidance, but now we’re guiding for record production and THIS TIME WE REALLY MEAN IT“. Here’s the table in that post, showing the constant underperformance of the company.
| Minefinders (MFN) Au prod vs previous MFN guidance, six month periods | |||
| gold | guidance* | result | comment |
| 2h09 | 50,000 to 60,000 | 39,759 | fail |
| 1h10 | 36,000 to 40,000 | 32,561 | fail |
| 2h10 | 55,000 to 60,500 | ? | buy used car? |
| *2h09 guidance from 2q09 md&a, 2010 guidance from YE09 md&a | |||
| Minefinders (MFN) Ag prod vs previous MFN guidance, six month periods | |||
| silver | guidance* | result | comment |
| 2h09 | 1,200,000 to 1,300,000 | 615,870 | fail |
| 1h10 | 680,000 to 765,000 | 522,233 | fail |
| 2h10 | 1,650,000 to 1,830,000 | ? | boy cry wolf? |
| *2h09 guidance from 2q09 md&a, 2010 guidance from YE09 md&a | |||
It’s amazing that anyone takes them seriously, but this is not a world of logic, ladies and gentlemen, it’s a world of bullshit hype and shift-that-paper, so as this post noted on August 5th the Canadian houses were quickly lining up to pump this dog yet again. Choice quotes include this from Scotiafool:
“This was a miss on consensus and Indi (the analyst) believes any pullback on MFL today should be bought.……. The Q2/10 quarter likely won’t change investor’s minds but that is backward looking and Indi believes the inflection point is right now.“
And this from Desjardinsfool:
“However, we are encouraged by the fact that realized grades should continue to improve in 2H10……”
There were plenty more besides those two, as well. Another thing you can bet your house on is that none of the Canadian houses will bear any sort of responsibility for they pisspoor call on this dog, as they’ll much prefer to blame the “disappointing news from the company” than note their own bullshit hype.
And so here we are with MFN explaining to the world how it won’t make guided production in 3q10 and most likely 4q10. This company, that promised to be a cash cow in 2009, now tries to get its long-suffering sheep to wait til 2011 before even the prospect of a profit is on the table. As we said last month, the clue is in the name of the company. Minefinders should have stuck to finding mines and not pretending they could actually run one, as it’s now patently obvious that they can’t. DYODD
UPDATE: The hypnosis continues as the Scotiafool covering MFN considers “…any negative reaction to yesterday’s news as a buying opportunity…” Jeesh, those guys must be knee-deep in this paper. When will the world call bullshit on this game of cahoots?