Perseus well placed for acquisition as gold sector consolidates

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/mining-energy/perseus-well-placed-for-acquisition-as-gold-sector-consolidates/story-e6frg9df-1226120382921

PERSEUS Mining and Teranga Gold could be the next gold miners in corporate activity after the $600 million Adamus Resources deal, as juniors continue to consolidate to fill the "genuine mid-tier gap" in Australia's gold sector.

After Newcrest Mining's $10 billion takeover of Lihir Gold, the gold sector has been one of the busiest for dealmaking, along with coal, as local and international miners scramble to grow through acquisition to increase production and market value amid the soaring gold price.
The spot price of gold this morning touched a fresh high of $US1911.54 as continued global jitters push investors into the safety of the precious metal.
After the Lihir deal, US major Goldcorp swooped on Andean Resources - at the time Australia's second-biggest goldminer - in a $C3.6 billion ($3.49bn) deal, followed by Canada's Anatolia Minerals move on Perth-based Avoca Resources, which created Alacer Gold.

 

Catalpa Resources, Conquest Mining, Focus Minerals and Crescent Gold are also exploring various deals.

But after Adamus became the latest yesterday as it merged with Canada's Endeavour Mining to form a $US600 million West African-focused gold play listed in Sydney and Toronto, Goldman Sachs analysed other small-cap producers that could be targets.
Analyst Ian Preston said the key reason for the wave of gold activity was driven by a need to diversify operational risk, reduce gold hedge-book commitments and increase both production and market capitalisation.
He said the Adamus deal provided continued evidence West Africa remained one of the most "exciting global postcodes" for resource growth and corporate activity in the gold space, and cited Teranga as a potential target and the larger Perseus as potential suitor.
"It is clear that the market is happy to afford a premium to those companies which have potential, but have not yet disappointed the market through capital blowouts of production disruptions," he said. "Teranga's share price is well below what we think is an appropriate value. Trading at these levels, we would view Teranga as susceptible to takeover."
In contrast to Teranga's market value of about $350m, Perseus is valued at about $1.4bn as investors bet on a smooth ramp-up to full production at its Central Ashanti project in Ghana, which Mr Preston said could make its scrip come under favourable viewing.
"With scrip priced as such, we argue that Perseus is well placed to acquire additional production using paper," he said.
Adamus and Endeavour sold their deal, which is subject to shareholder approval, on synergies of their West African assets, and wider production profile and market value to gain more market recognition and grow through acquisitions.
By 2013, Endeavour intends to grow production from existing assets to 250,000oz from 172,000oz, which could more than double with acquisitions and as exploration projects come online.
The deal, which will see Adamus shareholders receive 0.285 Endeavour shares for each share, also enabled Adamus to use Endeavour's much greater cashpile to pay down $US160m of debt at its Nzema project in Ghana.
Mr Preston said reducing the project debt and lowering its hedged gold position, which is typical of project finance, allowed it to put the cash towards the development of its next project.
"We view the deal as a positive for Adamus shareholders with the combined entity having a strong balance sheet, two producing assets, an additional development project providing production growth and a significant landholding...in West Africa with substantial exploration upside," said UBS analyst Jo Battershill.
Other analysts have suggested Kingsgate Consolidated, Medusa Mining and Saracen Mineral Holdings could also be targets.
By late morning, Adamus shares continued yesterday's rise, up 3.5 per cent to 73.5 cents, while Teranga was up 0.87 per cent to $2.32 and Perseus rose 2.45 per cent to $3.34. The broader market was up 1.16 per cent.

Marengo featured in RRS

Quintessential Resources Ltd - IPO

A New IPO
This is also a gold play IPO in PNG. 
Managing director is Paige Mcneil, which is Peter Mcneil's wife (Frontier resources limited)
Successfully raised $6m in the past week.
Might be an interesting company to watch in terms of its future development.
http://www.quintessentialresources.com.au/quintessentialresourceslimited-home.html

Another Copper Mining company being taken over

KORES, Capstone Reach Joint Deal to Acquire Canadian Copper Mining Company

The Korea Resources Corp. formed a consortium to acquire Canadian copper mining firm Far West for US$700 million on Sunday.

KORES, which will manage the company, invested $400 million and Capstone Mining of Canada the rest. It is the first time that KORES has acquired a business specializing in overseas resource development.

Far West has three mines in Chile and Australia. It recently completed exploration of Chile's Santo Domingo mine with estimated deposits of 540 million tons of copper and is taking legal procedures to start mining operations there.

KORES hopes to produce some 75,000 tons of copper a year from the Chilean mine starting in 2015 and holds the rights to sell half the output.

(http://english.chosun.com/site/data/html_dir/2011/04/18/2011041800701.html)

__________________________________________________________________

Another takeover offer has been launched for a copper-iron miner in Canada yesterday by a Korean company! As I mentioned in my earlier post, all these takeovers where Copper is above US$4/lb are helping to build the case that future copper demand is robust. This takeover also provides us with some interesting reference point for value comparison.

(Note: I have been using MGO as a ruler to measure all the other copper mining companies so we can have a reference case for comparison.)

Some characteristics of FarWest Mining's copper/iron project with comparison to MGO:

1. Low-grade copper: 0.32% for the Indicated Category and 0.19% for the Inferred Category. (similar to MGO)

(refer to: http://www.farwestmining.com/i/pdf/2010-07-12_NR.pdf)

2. Total resource at 0.2 CuEq% cut-off:

Indicated Category: 3522M lbs of Copper (worth US$14.1B) ; 138Mt of Iron (worth US$15.9B)

Inferred Category: 268M lbs of Copper (worth US$1.1B); 17Mt of Iron (worth US$1.95B)

A total resource value of approx US$33B based on iron ore price of $115/tonne and $4/lb copper price. FarWest Mining's resource is less compared to MGO's ~US$40B worth of resource value at 0.2 CuEq% cut-off).

Note that Citigroup Inc. of New York this month raised its 2014 iron- ore price forecast by 15 percent to $115 a metric ton and the 2015 estimate by 38 percent to $110 a metric ton.

3. Production rate at 60% of the initial rate of MGO (MGO's initial production rate at 125ktpa).

4. First Production Timing: 2015 (later than MGO).

Note that MGO's market cap is A$330M at today's price. FarWest Mining has been taken over for US$700M market cap. In my opinion, MGO is still considered cheap by comparison with FarWest Mining.

By: Peter Koay

Marengo Mining (MGO): A Future Takeover Target?

By: Peter Koay

With the news of the US$6.5B bid for Equinox from MinMetals hitting the markets a few days ago, timed at a point where copper price is still hovering above $4, this helps provide confidence to the markets that there is a brighter future to copper beyond the immediate future. This suggests that copper price may well be set to be above $4 in the years to come (this confirms my earlier assumption of $4/lb average copper price for the years to come). Demand for copper is forecasted to be outstripping the supply for this year and the following year, and it seems that this scene won’t be changing in the near-term as it does take quite some time to prove and bring out copper resource from the ground.

I’ve done some comparisons of Equinox and Marengo considering that Equinox is a pure-copper play.

A summary of the comparison:

§ MGO’s M&I copper resource is about 50% of Equinox’ Lumwana Project

§ MGO’s capital cost is twice the capital cost of Lumwana (this may be due to cheaper construction costs in Africa compared to PNG).

§ MGO has the potential to become the top 15 largest copper producer in the world when it ramps up to 50Mt (at ~0.5% Cu), i.e. production rate of 250ktpa, making it to be in the league of Equinox.

§ MGO and EQN’s operating costs are similar.

§ Note the ratios (highlighted in green) to compare Yandera Project with Equinox’ Lumwana or Jabal Sayid projects. This indicates that MGO in 2-3 years time shall at least be 8-10 times the market price of today.

§ Note the comparison of Jabal Sayid’s project with Yandera project: This shows the potential that MGO has to become at least a $1B mkt cap company (even before achieving production). My thoughts is that it’ll reach $1B market cap when DFS is released, EPC Lump Sum contract signed, project financing completed(targeted for Nov’11) and offtake arrangement contracts signed. So, $1/share for MGO by end of this year is not an unrealistic target.

Note that MGO share price has been hovering between $0.30-$0.32 over the past week, with a breakout today to finish at $0.335. The share price was consistently capped by ~1M shares buying at $0.31 and 1M shares selling at $0.32. It is believed that some big funds are accumulating MGO shares to force out weak holders of the share in anticipation that the share price shall go up when the DFS is released.

These two caps have been removed today, with dad & mum investors to provide the next push to $0.40. The share has recently been also reported on the HeraldSun newspapers, promoting public awareness of this share. Refer to:

http://www.heraldsun.com.au/business/in-the-black/another-twist-on-copper-story/story-e6frfinf-1226034986286

ASX: Marengo Mining Ltd (MGO) - The BEST buy of 2011

The results of my research are getting much more interesting and exciting than I had envisioned earlier! I decided to compare Rex Minerals (RXM) with Marengo Mining (MGO) after reading an article in Eureka Report that compared SFR and RXM in Oct’10.

RXM & MGO Comparison Table:

	MGO	RXM
Copper Resource:
Measured	1 Billion pounds	Nil
Indicated	1.9 Billion pounds	Nil
Inferred	3.6 Billion pounds	2.64 billion pounds
Other resources:	Molybdenum	Gold
Measured	45 M lbs ($540M)	Nil
Indicated	68 M lbs ($816M)	Nil
Inferred	91 M lbs ($1.09B)	1.1 Moz ($1.5B)
Capital Cost:	US$1.6B	Not determined yet
Financing Strategy:	NFC offering to arrange financing of at least 70% of the capital cost of project	Unknown (No clear financing strategy so far identified from presentations.)
Market Cap:	$300M	~$430M
First Production:	2014	Unknown
Completion of DFS:	1Q 2011	Unknown (starting in 2012, but could last for more than a year)
Cash at Bank:	$70M	$103.7M
Exploration Upside:	Project covers +100km of the highly prospective Bundi Fault Zone. Less than 5% of structural corridor drilled to date.	Multiple large scale and shallow targets on the Yorke Peninsula near Hillside.
Operating Cost:	$0.90-$1.00/lb of copper	Unknown

If comparing JUST the inferred category of resource, MGO has $15.5B and RXM has $12.06B worth of resources (based on $4/lb for copper and $12/lb for Mo and $1350/oz for gold). This means that MGO should be at $550M market cap purely on an inferred resource comparison basis, i.e. a share price of $0.56!! We haven’t even factored the resource that MGO has in the measured or indicated category!!

In my opinion, MGO should experience a significant re-rating soon (if not NOW!!). It’s either SFR, RXM and OZL share prices that need to drop to the level of MGO, or alternatively, MGO rising up to the level of SFR & RXM.

In any case, if one is to buy MGO shares now and hold them for 3 years, one will have a stake in a $300M market cap company that will be producing US$600M cashflow per year in 2014! This will be a very attractive takeover target!!

By: Peter Koay

ASX Marengo Mining Ltd (MGO): A better value proposition than Sandfire Resources (SFR)

If one has to understand the value of MGO, one has to compare it with all the other copper producing companies. Based on the most recent SFR reported resource statement and its pre-feasibility report, the following comparison is made.

Resource comparison:

	MGO (Cu)	SFR (Au)	SFR (Ag)	SFR (Cu)
Measured	1000M lbs ($4B)	47k oz  ($63.4M)	-	52.8M lbs ($211.2M)
Indicated	1900M lbs ($7.6B)	491k oz  ($662.8M)	3750k oz ($112.5M)	1078M lbs ($4.31B)
Inferred	3600M lbs ($14.4B)	186k oz ($251.1M)	1305k oz ($39.1M)	286M lbs ($1.14B)
Total	6500M lbs ($26B)	724k oz ($977.3M)	5055k oz ($151.6M)	1416.8M lbs ($5.67B)

*Conversion using copper price of US$4/lb, silver price of $30/oz, and gold price of US$1350/oz.

	MGO Resource Value	SFR Resource Value
Measured	$4B	$274M
Indicated	$7.6B	$5.08B
Inferred	$14.4B	$1.43B
Total	$26B	$6.78B

Capital Cost comparison:

MGO: US$1.6B

SFR: A$400M (refer to: http://asx.com.au/asxpdf/20110304/pdf/41x7hft3k0lzyg.pdf)

The capital cost of MGO is 4 times SFR’s. In the right ball park considering that MGO’s resource is approx 4 times of SFR.

Operating Cost comparison:

MGO and SFR’s operating cost is almost the same, i.e. ~$0.90-$1.00 per lb.   

Production Timing:

MGO 1^st ore concentrate produced: 2014

SFR 1^st ore concentrate produced: Q3, 2012

Note also that DFS completion for SFR is 2Q 2011 whereas MGO’s DFS report is targeted to be released to the market by 1Q 2011.   

NPV Analysis:

Basic NPV analysis of SFR project gives us a price of $7.80/share with the following assumptions:

1. 70kt/Cu and 45koz of Gold production/year.
2. Mine life of 7 years (as per PFS report)
3. 1^st Production in 3Q 2012.
4. Net Cash Flow: Gross Cash Flow ratio: 0.56
5. Cost of capital: 10%
6. Capital cost: $400M
7. 150M issued shares
8. $4/lb copper price and $1350/oz gold price

Based on NPV analysis, it seems that the value of SFR’s project is almost fully factored into the share price.

Based on market cap comparison,

Current market cap of SFR is $1.02B (@$6.90/share) with 148.3M shares issued. 

Current Market Cap of MGO is $300M (@$0.30/share) with 994M shares issued.

Based on “Net Profit before tax, depreciation and interest” comparison, SFR is saying that it’ll have $330M-$350M cash flow. MGO will have ~ $600M cashflow per year. Almost doubling SFR’s cashflow!!

Basically, this comparison between MGO and SFR tells us that MGO should have at least $1B market cap NOW, which means that it’s share price should be about $1/share NOW. And in 2-3 years time, it should be ~$3/share when it’s producing copper at a similar rate of OZ Minerals.

  

Note: This comparison is done assuming that SFR has no value factored into the share price from all its other projects/investments.

SFR’s most recent upgraded Resource report:

Frontier Resources Ltd (FNT) – Moving into the next Frontier soon!

Equity Analyst: Peter Koay

Target Price: ~$0.50 (Current price: $0.25/share)
Current Mkt Cap: $51.3M

Frontier Resources Ltd (FNT) –
Moving into the next Frontier soon!

I think that this article is long overdue, considering that I had my eyes on this company for a period of time. Imagine with me for a while the following scene:

“A river watering the garden flowed from Eden; from there it was separated into four headwaters. The name of the first is the Pishon; it winds through the entire land of Havilah, where there is gold. (The gold of that land is good)”

(emphasis mine) [Genesis 2:10-11]

“The gold of that land is good!!”

Although PNG may not be the land of Havilah (it could very well be though!), the words above aptly describe the few pieces of land that FNT is exploring now.

FNT has exploration permits for the following lands in PNG:

1. Andewa
2. Bulago
3. Leonard Schultz
4. Likuruanga
5. Central New Britain
6. East New Britain

I usually use a few key characteristics to determine which junior mining explorers I would invest in (and FNT seems to meet the few criteria that I have):

1. A potential resource in the ground that has a ‘WOW’ factor –

Typically, we see a lot of 3 to 5g/t of gold results from many gold exploration companies. These grades are usually sufficient to justify a world-class mine (provided that it’s a huge land with similar grades). However, some of the FNT’s exploration results are showing in the order of 10-100g/t of gold! Look at their Bulago results!! WOWW!! “The gold of that land is good!!”

If the contained resource is only in the few hundred thousand ounces of gold range, this usually doesn’t cause sufficient excitement among ASX investors that is necessary to send its shares skyrocketing. With high-grade gold mineralization implied from high gold concentrations, FNT has a much greater potential to have a mouth-dropping effect on the investors.

A mixture of outcrop channel samples and drilling results from FNT’s initial exploration lend a lot of weight to expectations that they will eventually be gigantic economical mines:

1. Andewa – 7.9m of 10.01g/t gold, 10.8m of 7.4g/t gold, 3m of 10.97g/t gold, 5m of 18.5g/t gold, 3m of 14.26g/t gold, 15.6m of 5.12g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

2. Bulago – 27m of 66.8g/t of gold, 4m of 135.6g/t gold, 9m of 64.0g/t gold, 16m of 36.5g/t gold, 18m of 40.3g/t gold, 7.5m of 67.0g/t gold and 9m of 24.0g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

3. Leonard Schultz – 16m of 18.60g/t gold within 76m of 5.35g/t gold, 22m of 2.71g/t gold and 36m of 1.15g/t gold. (Potential Nickel Gold Mine)

4. Likuruanga – 55m of 5.8g/t gold, 10m of 5.1g/t gold, 70m of 1.7g/t gold, 27m of 0.71% Copper & 66m of 0.42% Copper. (Potential Copper-Gold Mine)

5. Central New Britain – 7km x 2.5km Porphyry Cu/Mo (No results yet, but a potential Cu-Mo mine, similar to Marengo’s Yandera Project)

6. East New Britain – 10.9m of 26.9g/t gold, 2m of 16.9g/t gold, 4m of 9.84g/t gold. (Potential Gold Mine)

2. Have a successful track record in exploration and project development experience

FNT has been around the mining picture for a long time in PNG. In fact, they were very close to start developing a world-class project back in 2008…until the Australian Govt interfered by influencing PNG Govt to not renew FNT’s exploration lease as their deposit is very close to the Kokoda Track. Their indicated & inferred resource at that time was proven to be 213.6MT @ 0.51% Cu Equivalent (1.08Mt Cu Eq).

To read about their Feasibility Study on Kodu Deposit:

http://www.asx.com.au/asx/statistics/displayAnnouncement.do?display=pdf&idsId=00784598

To read about the PNG Govt’s decision not to renew their exploration license, see:

http://www.asx.com.au/asxpdf/20081031/pdf/31dc2clxcrgdhq.pdf

Also, Peter McNeil had been managing director of FNT since he listed it in 2003. In words extracted from an interview with him (refer to http://www.topstocks.com.au/stock_discussion_forum.php?action=show_thread&threadid=600357),

“I have a masters degree in geochemistry from the university of Houston and started work in PNG in 1985, but I have also worked in Arizona, Newfoundland [Canada], the Eastern Goldfields and the Kimberley of Western Australia. I was a consulting supervisory geologist when the discovery holes were drilled for both the Nimary and Sunrise Dam deposits in 1992 and 1993, and also worked at Lihir. After Nimary, I then stepped straight into Macmin, which was listed by my father [Robert] and Denis O’Neil in December 1993. Frontier [formerly called TasGold] we [Peter and his wife Paige] listed in April 2003 and it was formed as a JV with Macmin. Gold has been my primary career focus, but more recently I have worked with porphyry coppers and massive sulfide deposits. I guess you could say I am a bit of an epithermal, come porphyry person.”

3. Reliable drilling equipment with good (and cheap) crews

FNT owns all the rigs that are being used for drilling. FNT also operates the drill rigs by themselves. This is a cheaper way of drilling, considering that they can side-step all the troubles and higher premium that come with contracting others to perform drilling for them. That being said, for them to test deeper targets (up to 800m), they may have to either modify their existing rigs or to charter some other rigs to get the job done.

4. Good cash position for continuous exploration and drilling to prove up new reserves and does not have to significantly dilute existing shareholders to raise money for exploration

In most recent announcement, FNT spent ~$1.55M cash over past half-year ending 31 Dec’10 with ~$2M. Spending at this rate, this means that FNT has enough cash to last them to about Jun’11. Considering that they’ll be drilling at Andewa, they’ll need cash injection (via capital raising) to continue on with their operations. By releasing the 5000 rock chip samples from Andewa (promised to be done by end Feb’11 but not released yet), assuming that they will be good results, they will provide a lift to the current share price, and hence be able to raise capital with less dilution to existing shareholders.

Also, FNT had secured a very good deal with Ok Tedi in that Ok Tedi has the option to earn 58% of Bulago and Leonard Schultz JVs and up to 80.1% of Likuruanga, Central & East New Britian JVs by spending US$12 million in each of the project within 6 years. This means that the drilling costs can easily be covered by Ok Tedi without the need to raise capital to drill these target areas. The only drilling costs that FNT would need to raise is for Andewa project and for the other suite of projects in Tasmania, Australia.

5. Have good local engagement and relationship

FNT’s boss, Peter McNeil had spent his past 27 years in PNG. Some of the PNG national crews he currently has had been with him from the beginning of this company. With someone who’s been inside for past 27 years, I would think he’s got quite some insights as to how to best operate within PNG. In addition, the JV with Ok Tedi will allow it to have access to many influential people within PNG as Ok Tedi is mostly owned by the PNG people.

Other reasons contributing to why FNT may be quite a good bet:

6. Peter McNeil has recently quit his chairmanship in CopperMoly Ltd to focus more on FNT

If FNT’s prospects were not good, why would the MD quit his other involvement to spend more time on it? Seems that he’s keen to move faster with the development of FNT, which he has a huge stake in it.

7. FNT has recently submitted to obtain an exploration license for Mt Schrader

This new license is a license that covers the area that surrounds Mt Andewa. This new area shall be 2477sq km, compared to Mt Andewa’s license which covers only a 21 sq km area. Now, why did FNT make this move? If the results coming from Mt Andewa are not good, why would FNT grab more of the land surrounding Mt Andewa? Seems like they've got some real stuff coming out from Mt Andewa. You can see the land size comparison below:

8. OK Tedi’s involvement as a JV Partner

Ok Tedi hosts a world-class copper mine, directly employs 2000 people, and had been producing for 20+ years. OTML's shareholders are PNG Sustainable Development Program Limited, (52 per cent), Inmet Mining Ltd (18 per cent) and the PNG Government (30 per cent). The PNG Government holds equity directly (15 per cent) and on behalf of the Western Province (12.5 per cent) and landowners from the mine area (2.5 per cent).

Considering that Ok Tedi’s mine is going to be shut in 2013 (with a potential for mine-life extension to 2022 that’s still in feasibility phase), they would be quite desperate to find another world-class mine to keep them in business.

So far, Ok Tedi has only FNT as its JV Partner in prospecting for more resources. In one sense, Ok Tedi has all its eggs in one basket (i.e. FNT)!! Now, why would a world-class producer who had been operating for ~25 years, when facing an ‘extinction’ threat, bet the future of their company on one company, i.e. FNT?

They must have very strong reasons to do so. And considering the results they’ve got in Bulago so far, it’s not a surprise that they have a higher priority to drill it in Apr’11 (5000m drilling program planned).

Share Price Analysis:

The share price of FNT had gone up from $0.07 back in Nov’10 to a high of $0.42 in Feb’11 (due to speculation that very good results shall be released from the Andewa’s 5000 rock chip samples). This is a highly active and volatile stock with speculators watching with eagle’s eyes, keen to exploit its potential. It is not a share for the faint-hearted!

With drilling upcoming in April on both Andewa and Bulago projects, I believe that there will be huge upside to the share price as the drilling results are released in 2Q’11. If speculation on Andewa’s results was sufficient to push the share price to $0.42, with the definitive drilling results coming from both upcoming Andewa and Bulago drilling campaigns (which I’m quite confident that they’ll bode well), $0.50 is not an impossible target to reach.

With Peter McNeil giving a presentation next Wed in Melbourne (23 March), it’s quite likely that he’ll be talking about the plans for the drilling programme in Apr’11. And quite likely, he may release results from Andewa’s rock chip samples prior to his presentation, this will cause excitement amongst the investors and will push the share price up.

Conclusion:

FNT is a highly prospective junior explorer, a quite stable company from the perspective of having a very good world-class JV Partner who’s offered to pay for drilling costs for up to 5 of the JV areas and providing their own drilling rig + sample results analysis, having a good Managing Director who has a lot of experience in PNG, owns its drilling rigs with low-cost drilling crews, and having a diversified portfolio that have high-grade gold mineralization.

If FNT manages to prove 1 out of the 3 potential world-class mines (Bulago, Andewa and Leonard Schultz), this will transform FNT to become a stakeholder in a potential world-class gold mine. Its shares won’t be worth 25 cents anymore. FNT is moving to the next Frontier soon as the drilling program starts in Apr'11.

Of course, if it manages to prove that it's got 3 world-class mines, this share would certainly be worth a few dollars. This can be a potential Lihir Gold in the making (taken over by NewCrest for $9.5B)!

Note: The projects within Australia have not been mentioned so far as I see them as peripheral projects that FNT owns. The main flagship projects for FNT shall be the PNG projects, which will bring much more significant cashflows to FNT. However, if FNT manages to discover more resources in Tasmania, that will be a bonus to the share price.






Disclosure: The analyst does have an interest in FNT. This share analysis does not represent an investment advisory service as no subscription or management fees are charged. The contents of the article are provided as general information only and should not be taken as investment advice or as a recommendation to buy or sell any security or financial instrument. Any investment decisions carried out based on information, analysis, or commentary provided here is solely your responsibility. You should consult your investment adviser before making any investment decisions.