Solvista Gets Capital Breathing Room: The Calandra Report

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Also: Sysorex Global, Inovio Pharma

Solvista Gold corners Iamgold into a porphyry partnership at Caramanta in Colombia.

Takeways: Breathing room for Solista's Miller O' Prey and Jeffrey Miller. Bob Allen's Grupo de Bullet owns a hunk of Solvista (SVV in Canada).

Solvista is one of our TCR 8 It also is one of three Colombia-centered companies among our eight preferred investments.

I just talked with the principals.

IAMGOLD (IMG) is an active investor in Colombia and across the Americas. The geologist and executive who helped put this together, Nicolas Lopez, also worked on other partnerships for entrepreneurial Iamgold in Colombia. I have met him several times down there.

This Solvista Gold transaction, an earn-in for Iamgold, is detailed here. Caramanta, as you know from reports here stretching back to summer 2012, is a gold-copper porphyry whose off-the-scale grades sent Solvista shares above $1.

1. Jeffrey Brooks is chief exploration geologist for Solvista and calls the shots at Caramanta and the second Solvista property, high-grade-veined Guadalupe. Mr. Brooks is almost a legend in Colombia mining circles. Jeff's work helped delineate gold and silver deposits at El Marmato in 2007-2009; gold and copper at La Mina for Bellhaven Copper & Gold; and now at Solvista's properties.

2. Mr. O'Prey tells me from Medellin, where he lives with family, along with Mr. Brooks, that Iamgold's cash and operating support for Caramanta will "free up" Solvista, in a sense.

He says, "We still have more than $4.5 million in the bank, so as well as Guadalupe, we are going to start to review other projects for potential acquisition."

3. Other projects? Iamgold might be showing its stripes by sidestepping further investment in Bellhaven's La Mina, in which it already has a stake of more than 10 percent. I don't know for sure. Both La Mina and Caramanta are in Colombia's Mid Cauca Gold Belt.

I do know that Bellhaven (BHV) is selling for one of the lowest ounces-in-the ground prices in all of Latin America. All in, which means fully diluted shares that represent Colombia and Panama properties, BHV is selling for about $6 million.

BHV, a longtime sad-sack holding here, is one of probably 20 gold-copper-silver projects that Mr. Miller and Mr. Brooks can look at in Colombia, which has been hit hardest by mining investors this year. [Our two cents: I thought Guadalupe was worth an extensive drilling campaign; its potential gold grades and probable ease of mining, if proven, are a company-maker on their own.]

"There is a lot of stuff out there. I mean a lot," Robert Allen says from Grupo de Bullet. "Look at some of these companies down here and I say 'Dang the market sure has LOST CONFIDENCE in this thing in Segovia and that thing in Antioquia.' Doesn't matter where you are." Mr. Allen's Bullet is the largest syndicator of mining properties in Colombia and cobbled together Continental Gold (CNL in Canada), Solvista, Sabre Metals and other prospectors.

A Toronto outfit, Gerry McCarvill's Norvista, owns a large piece of Solvista, as well.

3. For our TCR audience: Take some SVV off your table ... if you feel like this one, like most of the rest, will relax after today's sugar-cane surge. Keep it in the mix if you do not need the cash for other ideas. Or if you happen to be investing in biomedical and technology and need a loss to balance your 2013 gains. (Pas moi.)

Fed Heads: I stopped watching the USA's Federal Reserve announcements after we sold CBS MarketWatch to Dow Jones in 2005. I continue to purchase gold stocks, including the 3x NUGT derivative.

Biomedical: Inovio (INO in USA) shares continue to rise smartly in the wake of OncoSec Medical's rousing results from its use of electroporation delivery in the treatment of metastatic melanoma, a hard tumor cancer. ... Good to see Biocryst Pharma shares back in a major biotech index on Nasdaq. The company posted promising candidates today for its preclinical work on hereditary angioedema attacks. Biocryst shares are turbo-charged in down and up markets. Right now BCRX shares (in USA) are in an up market and set their sights on the $7.80 high, perhaps before next week. BCRX is on its way toward becoming a mult-product drug developer in the areas of influenza, leukemia, gout and other infectious and autoimmune diseases. I own the shares.

Sold: The rest of my Mason Graphite. Made 15 percent on a small stake.

Bought: Started a position in Sysorex Global, whose shares (SYRX in USA), easily could triple if we see sharply rising sequential sales for the solutions provider in the area of corporate and government computer farms.

Your friendly,

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Thom Calandra

NEVER MISS AN EDITION OF THE CALANDRA REPORT - SUBSCRIBE BY PAYPAL... Thom Calandra is the editor of The Calandra Report, an investment newsletter. He previously co-founded and was founding editor of CBS Marketwatch, one of the world's largest financial Web sites. He also co-founded Ticker Trax for Stockhouse. Thom has a wife and two children, and is based in Tiburon, California. TCR, the newsletter, is a paid report: The Calandra Report for Paypal information. More →

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Thom Calandra

Twitter: @http://twitter.com/thomcalandra

thom.calandra@gmail.com

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