The saying goes that a rising tide lifts all boats. With the RIU Sydney Resources Round-up this week held under sustained rainfall, there was plenty of the wet stuff to keep the farmers happy. For keen investors, the conference was a welcome respite to stay dry and find the next ‘big thing’ to deliver a windfall.
At conferences like this, companies like Azure Minerals and WA1 first showed off their ‘interesting results’ that went on to be company makers.
Of the 95 presenting companies at this year’s Round-up, 65 were return visitors with another 30 presenting for the first time. Whilst the overall market cap of the presenting companies was $5.5 billion coming into this week, the vast majority of them had market caps of less than $60 million, offering significant upside in the event of a discovery.
There were just over 1500 delegates registered for this year’s event, with a solid and consistent turnout for all three days of the conference.
The conference kicked off Tuesday with a presentation by Michael Scantlebury from Euroz Hartleys who started ominously by popping up a title slide called “The End of Mining’. Some might have thought that he was treading dangerously given the audience. However, as his talk progressed, it became clear that media (and analysts) are often wrong in their forecasts, sometimes by a lot. Tip – don’t take what you read as a given.
The next three days saw keen MDs take the stage following a colourful intro by MC Chrissie Morrissy, trying their best to convince the potential investors in the audience to take the plunge and buy a few shares.
Rob Murdoch started Day 2 with a whirlwind of sober statistics on the resources sector, highlighting that, whilst not on life support, the health of the sector was not as good as it as two years ago, with less capital being raised and lower spending on exploration.
On Wednesday night, White Noise was once again proud to co-host the famous annual cocktail party with Euroz Hartleys, with around 180 executives, brokers and fund managers having a blast, before quite a few kicked on well into the night.
Did we see the next billion dollar market cap breakout explorer on stage this week? As is the nature of exploration, there’s a good chance we did. Who was it? Ask me next year….
White Noise communications is provided a fee for service working with companies which may have exposure to commodities or securities mentioned in these articles. All articles are the opinion of the author and are not endorsed by, or written in collaboration with, our clients.
