SSR Mining Inc. has received the necessary regulatory approvals from the Turkish Government and will restart its operations at the Copler mine (owned 80 per cent by SSR Mining).
Restarting a gold operation that
has two decades left to mine
SSR Mining Inc. (TSX—SSRM; NASDAQ—SSRM)
Scotiabank analyst Ovais Habib views the September restart of operations at Copler with great optimism. With no further delays, SSR can expect a strong fourth quarter in 2022, says Mr. Ovais.
Following a cyanide spill on June 22 of this year, and subsequent government intervention, mining was suspended at Copler. Now that the cause of the spill has been identified and rectified, SSR mining has accelerated and completed the planned maintenance that had been previously scheduled for the fourth quarter of 2022 which included partial relining of the face blocks in Autoclave 1. With the maintenance now completed, SSR Mining has no more scheduled maintenance planned for the rest of the year.
Located in east-central Turkey, approximately 1,100 kilometers southeast of Istanbul, Copler is a top-notch open mine pit with large deposits of epithermal gold, silver, and copper, Mr. Habib says. The site was discovered in 1999 and produced its first gold in 2010. In the last decade, Copler has produced 2 million ounces of gold.
Recent analyses reveal that Copler still has a mine life of over two decades. Just last year it generated 329,276 ounces of gold at the mine site with an AISC (all-in-sustaining costs) of US$713 per payable ounce of gold sold.
He continues, “At spot prices (US$1,675 per ounce), SSR’s fiscal 2022 free cash flow (FCF) is estimated at about US$215 million with fourth-quarter 2022 expected to account for about US$71 million (about 33 per cent of fiscal 2022 FCF). Following model updates, we maintain our ‘sector outperform’ rating and target price of $33.50 per share for SSR Mining shares.”
SSR Mining is a FCF-focused gold mining company with four producing assets located in the U.S., Canada, Turkey, and Argentina, combined with a global pipeline of development and exploration assets. The company also owns two feasibility-stage projects, Pitarrilla in Mexico and San Luis in Peru.
This is an edited version of an article that was originally published for subscribers in the October 28, 2022, issue of Investor’s Digest of Canada. You can profit from the award-winning advice subscribers receive regularly in Investor’s Digest of Canada.
Investor’s Digest of Canada, MPL Communications Inc.
133 Richmond St. W., Toronto, On, M5H 3M8, 1-800-804-8846
Investor's Digest of Canada •12/13/22 •