News

January 27, 2009

Peter Hambro Mining Heads Towards Production Of 500,000 Ounces Of Gold This Year, And At A Tidy Margin Too

By Alastair Ford

Shares in Peter Hambro Mining surged more than 20 per cent to around 500p earlier this week, after the Russian-focussed gold miner stated in a trading update that total attributable gold production for the year to December 2008 had come in at 393,600 ounces. Of that total, 267,100 ounces was from the company’s main Pokrovskiy mine, 72,900 ounces was from the Pioneer mine, still in the ramp up stage, and 22,700 ounces came from the company’s alluvial operations. The remainder was from local joint ventures. The total was at the upper end of the range of Peter Hambro’s forecast for the year of between 350,000 to 400,000 ounces of production.

As one of the most shorted companies on the Aim market, that share price rise will have caught plenty of people on the hop, although the activities of the big banks and the CFD merchants are unlikely to be much abated, and indeed the regulatory disclosures kept on coming after this particular piece of news was in. Minesite put the issue of the heavy shorting of Peter Hambro shares to the great man himself a few weeks ago, just after the proposed offer for iron ore spin-out Aricom was announced....