Andrew Neale

Gold Is Becoming the Standard Again | Andrew Neale - CopAur

• Top takeaway Neale argues gold is becoming the global standard as paper currencies devalue, pointing to physical demand he saw on a recent trip to Beijing, where Chinese savers of his age and younger are moving disposable dollars into gold, and to Indonesian retail outlets selling out on quarter-gram wafers as the local currency weakens.
• He says rising gold prices are good for mining economics because input costs rise but profit margins inflate by more, and he expects gold prices to go higher from current levels around $4,000 per ounce.
• He pushes back on the short-mine-life criticism, arguing the permitting trajectory is identical for a four-year and a ten-year mine, and that heap leaching the oxides first strips material sitting above higher-grade sulfides — so the initial short plan and the longer-term sulfide plan are one plan, not two.
• He argues CopAur should not keep returning to equity markets to fund exploration, and says the company can finance and build Kinsley without a significant increase in share count — about 120 million outstanding, roughly 160 million fully diluted — to avoid diluting existing shareholders.
• He says the board brought him on because designing, building and operating mines is what he does, and that moving straight into production instead of spending another five or six years growing the resource is a deliberate departure from how most companies approach a project.

Neale argues gold is becoming the currency standard again as paper currencies lose value, citing retail buying in China and Indonesia. CopAur's preliminary economic assessment (PEA — an early study, not a final feasibility study) lifts Kinsley Mountain's resource 52% to about 800,000 ounces. That study values the Nevada project just above $100 million after tax, against a company market cap near $15 million. Plan is fast cash flow: heap leach (a low-cost way to pull gold from crushed rock) a quarter of the resource, then fund drilling. Economics hinge on price — below $3,200 per ounce it fails a 20% after-tax return test, while a 10% gain lifts NPV about 50%.