Wednesday, December 26, 2012

Cap-Ex Ventures Ltd. (CPXVF) Seeks Iron In Quebec

Cap-Ex Ventures Ltd. (CPXVF / CEV.V) is focused on discovering iron in Quebec.  Their CEO has no education or background in mining.  Their previous CEO had some experience in mining but he was moved up to the board when Cap-Ex made a management services agreement with Forbes & Manhattan in December 2011.  I wonder about management changes that go from some relevant experience to zero relevant experience.  There's only one mining engineer with project experience on the team at present.

Their main projects are concentrated around Schefferville, Quebec.  None of their projects appear to have any NI 43-101 compliant confirmation of 2P reserves.  That's my main driver and I don't see it.  There is a railroad through their Block 103 and a major multinational steel firm has a plant nearby that could probably handle milling, so infrastructure is less of a concern with these projects.

They haven't posted any financial statements to their website as of today, so I had to search SEDAR for their annual statement dated August 31, 2012.  They had C$2.9M in cash on had at that time and had a net loss of C$4M.  Since then they raised a private placement in three tranches (C$3.5M, C$1.36M, and C$740k). This C$5.6M in cash should keep them around for another year, but it's hard to make more than a guess without seeing how their burn rate changes in subsequent quarterly financial statements.

Cap-Ex's share structure frankly scares me to death.  They've already issued almost 76 million share and they'll need a lot more capital to make it through further exploration before they even get to a production decision.  Shareholders can expect more dilution after future fundraising rounds.

Cap-Ex Ventures isn't for me because I need to see definite 2P reserves and solid management in a junior resource company.  It's interesting to note that the share price has crashed from about a buck to around US$0.27 today ever since Forbes & Manhattan entered the picture a year ago.  Nice work, folks (I'm being sarcastic).

Full disclosure:  No position in Cap-Ex Ventures Ltd. at this time.