Categories: Precious Metals
Topics: General Precious Metals

Silver Wheaton remains a unique offering in uncertain times

Silver Wheaton remains a unique offering in uncertain times

VANCOUVER (miningweekly.com) – As the tide turns in the resource investment space, a renewed focus on projectdevelopment sees many juniors looking for cash to fund their project development goals.

The world’s largest precious metals streaming firm Silver Wheaton believes it has the answer for the right junior firms: its early deposit precious metals purchase model can provide cash to take projects to the feasibility stage, in exchange for a future stream of by-product precious metals output.

“There is a lot of interest in this model,” president and CEO Randy Smallwood told Mining Weekly Online, warning, however, that Silver Wheaton is setting the bar high and few projects make the cut.

“We have some pretty high standards in terms of what we want to invest in, so we’ve looked at well over a hundred projects, and we like only about five of them, and have closed two deals out of those. There are a few others we’re still working on,” he said during the recent Prospectors and Developers Association of Canada international miningconvention in Toronto.

Smallwood believes the novel model makes a lot of sense for companies at the prefeasibility stage, noting that anything one can do to minimise the dilution to shareholders “makes sense”. These are projects that are at pre-bankable feasibility stage, meaning debt financing is not an option to these project proponents, only equity, making the early deposit model attractive for these companies to advance these projects towards that bankable feasibility stage, from where, ultimately, a construction decision can be made.

“It astounds me sometimes that people have an issue with selling a future noncore precious metals stream, but they have no qualm about issuing more equity to finance their projects. Our model remains very appealing and, so, we’re still active in that space and hoping to close a few more of those,” he said.

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