‘Brutal’ time to be a junior

Junior companies are cutting back on everything from salaries to exploration programs to make sure they’re still standing when the smoke clears from the current financial crisis.

Some analysts say it could be some time before the industry recoups its losses as investors have fled the riskier TSX Venture Exchange in droves: it’s down 50% since the summer and more than 60% since this time last year.

It’s really been since May that speculative capital has been avoiding the junior stocks, says Wendell Zerb, a senior mining analyst with Canaccord Adams.

“It’s been brutal,” Zerb says of the financial crisis. “When you have blue chip stocks acting like penny stocks there isn’t a lot of additional capital that’s flowing to the illiquid junior miners.”

Geodex Minerals (GXM-V, GXMLF-o) is taking action. Management have all taken pay cuts — the president now makes 50% less at $5,000 per month and the company has halted exploration programs on its non-core projects. Now the sole focus is on finishing a prefeasibility study at its flagship Sisson Brook tungsten-molybdenum project in New Brunswick by next spring.

“We’re trying to put ourselves in a financial position to ride out the storm for a year while still advancing our projects,” explains vice-president of business development, Christopher Anderson. “We use both sides of the paper and you can’t throw a pencil out unless it’s an inch and a half long.”

Zerb says it could be a while before companies can relax, pointing out that it took nearly four years for the junior market to recover losses from the 1987 crash, and almost as long after the 1997 Bre-X Minerals fiasco that sent investors fleeing from the junior mining industry.

“You can have some prolonged periods of time where you have some very big corrections,” Zerb says.

Getting cash is tough right now, but not impossible.

Journey Resources (JNY-V, JNYRF-o) had to cancel a brokered private placement this month, settling for a non-brokered financing at 8 per share compared with the original 12.5.

“Six months ago, it was very easy to do a financing and today it’s gotten infinitely more difficult,” says Journey president Jack Bal.

Geodex has just completed two flow-through financings totalling about $1.2 million at 30 per share, but that was less than half the amount the company would have pursued if market conditions were different.

Journey is also scaling back on its work programs and the company is now considering buying smaller projects — “things we wouldn’t have actually looked at a year ago,” Bal says.

Journey will only go after projects that can be brought into production in a short time, providing the company with much needed cash. Bal believes there could be dark days ahead for those who don’t have cash flow.

“Possibly half of the companies out there will go bankrupt or get merged with other companies,” Bal predicts.

Zerb says that in times like these, some companies do de-list, while others go into hibernation.

“They stop spending, pare back on all corporate and property commitments, burn rates, you name it. They just wait for a turnaround until they’re able to refinance,” Zerb says.

BeaconRock analyst Mike Niehuser says there could be company creation going forward as large companies spin off assets that aren’t adding value to their stock.

With stocks at bargain prices, there’s also buying opportunity for both the bigger companies and investors, Niehuser says. Profitable producers will be in a solid position to pick and choose the best juniors to boost their own rosters.

“Everybody knows who the majors are, but who the real winning emerging producers are is probably the next important opportunity for investors,” Niehuser says.

And although there’s been some slowing of growth in India and China, the fundamentals are still there for growth in metals, Zerb says.

But before any good news happens on the Ventureexchange, Zerb says stability is needed in the United States and the rest of the world.

Zerb says we’ll have to “see how the big board recovers first and then hope some of that filters to the juniors… Until we see that you’re going to see a period of difficulty.”