icestorm

There was a sheet ice storm in Portland, Oregon the other day and I did not make it to the office. There was one inch of sheet ice on both my car and the roads, and then it warmed up slightly, producing water on top of the ice.

With the ice storm, the decision to go to work had 60% odds of being time accretive and 40% odds of being a mess, and there were a significant number of non-reversible outcomes possible.

I am significantly more productive at my office, but the cost of getting there could have had serious outcomes, where cars get totalled, or worse - me or someone else ends up in the hospital or dead. All of those outcomes could take days to clean up.

Junior mining companies in 2016 are facing such an ice storm, but it's not the first morning of said storm, it is Year 4, and the critical thinking that supports rational decision-making in the early years is done. If I was stuck at home for 20 days with no end in sight, I might brave it just because I am bored, frustrated, or just don't have a choice.

Majors, loan to own funds, and most larger predators in our space know that most junior mining company management does not have rational decision-making ability left. They know that we have had so many bad years that we can't think about, let alone model out, the future.

2016 is going to be the year that good companies fail to deliver returns to investors. They will fail by selling at the bottom of the market, doing stupid financings, taking toehold stakes that turn into fire sales, and 101 other bad deals that just do not support long-term planning. The fact is, juniors at this point are going to do things they would not do if they were sober, in a better market, or in the first morning of the ice storm.

If you wipe out the winners in a bad market with stupid deals, a recovery will be hard to achieve on the back of the losers.

In any outcome, it is going to take years to clean up from this industry recession, but it will take even longer if you have a toxic loan or a bad deal on the books that ties up the project without creating value.

So when you are offered that deal, think about if it creates value or if you are just doing it because you want to do something. If it does not create value, why do it?