Have a look at this one for the future. It's a subsidiary of Oxus Gold which has been going great guns for the last nine months. Bill Trew has turned Oxus round since the beginning of February - asking price then 10.35, now 81 - and I bet he will do the same with Marakand. The asking price on Thursday should open at 20p, unless the MMs mess about with the price. For those of you not familiar with this opportunity I will post some more info later.

Scottie,

On only 2 days price action, they can't!

I suppose you could say they are in an uptrend?

Gents,

A nice rise again today!

I'm not sure the market has got their heads round the value of Marakand to the Oxus balance sheet yet.

Gold $406 tonight, so looking forward to a decent monday for MKD and OXS.

I don't think anyone has got their heads round how the Marakand price has taken off. I was sitting back on Thursday thinking there would an initial burst of buying and then the price would settle back down to around 25p - wrong!

Seems like it's only going to get better!

Feature Story



Date : December 8, 2003



Marakand Minerals Shows London’s AIM Market A Clean Pair Of Heels.

The shares of Marakand Minerals, which is a split-off from Oxus Gold, hit the ground running when they listed on AIM on Friday and proved that one plus one can equal more than two. The company had raised 4 million before expenses at 20 p per share back in October through Williams de Broe who are brokers and nominated advisers. Warrants were attached which are exercisable when the shares reach 40p each and these are also now listed on AIM. At the beginning of last week Oxus shares were just over 80p each where the market capitalisation was 160 million. Ex-Marakand they advanced further to 187p, which is highly unusual after splitting off a significant asset, and Marakand shares doubled to 41p which put the warrants in-the-money from day one. The two companies are now capitalised at around 200 million which confirms that the exercise generated real value for shareholders to whom Oxus is going to distribute part of its holding in Marakand.

The success of this listing raises more than one question, but the main one is whether the price for the Marakand shares was pitched correctly. It might be argued that the shares could have been placed at 30p each, but hindsight is a great advantage. What it does do is point the finger at Collins Stewart’s listing of Trans-Siberian Gold a week earlier .The placing price for this one was 150p per share. When the brokers found they could raise more than the required 10 million they went for 16 million. The trouble was that they had used up all their ammunition in the secondary market and the shares are now languishing at a discount at 135p. It is amazing how long it takes to get a company’s shares on the move again if they have a disappointing debut.

The funds raised by Marakand will be used to complete a bankable feasibility study on the rich silver/zinc Khandiza deposit in Uzbekistan and finance pre-construction activities. This project was described to Minews by Bill Trew, the chief executive of Oxus Gold, at an interview back in June as being the jewel in the crown at Oxus. So far he seems to have found a lot of jewellery as Oxus shares have put up a remarkable performance since he and his team from MAED came aboard just over a year ago. This team has had plenty of experience of bringing gold projects in difficult parts of Africa into production ahead of schedule and below budget and have carried out a similar achievement at Oxus’s Amantaytau gold mine which is also in Uzbekistan.

Alasdair Stuart, who is chief executive of Marakand, was not hanging round London to congratulate himself. He answered his mobile from Uzbekistan and does not expect to be be back here until the end of January. As he pointed out he has plenty of work to do as the mine will be underground and the metallurgy is quite complicated. The Khandiza deposit is a volcanogenic massive sulphide deposit that contains zinc, lead and copper sulphides and associated silver and gold, although in revenue terms the deposit is essentially zinc-silver-lead-copper-gold. It is located in the Sariasia region of southeast Uzbekistan and is 50 kilometres from the regional towns of Sariasia and Denau..

The Khandiza deposit contains an audited resource above a 2% zinc cutoff of 13.0 million tonnes at an average grade of 8.3% zinc, 4.1% lead, 1.0% copper, 144 g/t silver and 0.34 g/t gold. At the end of 2002, Oxus further investigated the geological interpretation, again using traditional cross sectional and irregular blocking methods, and revised upward its internal resource estimate. Although this resource estimate has yet to be audited, WAI have discussed the reinterpretation and re-evaluation process with Oxus, and believe it is reasonable that an increase in tonnage and grade would be expected. Thus, with this revised geological model, WAI has recommended the instigation of a Datamine computer software resource evaluation as a basis for commencing a detailed mine design to full bankable feasibility study level. This work commenced at the beginning of November.

The current plan is to pre-concentrate the milled ore by dense media separation and metallurgical testwork indicates that 82.6 per cent of the zinc should be recovered to the zinc concentrate, 84.9 per cent of the lead to the lead concentrate and 82.6 per cent of the copper to the copper concentrate while 50 per cent of the silver reports to the lead concentrate and 33.8 per cent to the copper concentrate. The concentrates will then be transported to the Almalyk smelter which is near Tashkent if the price is right. The Government of Uzbekistan hopes so as it would prolong the life of the smelter. Based on the work done to date it is expected that the project will produce over 110,000 tonnes of zinc concentrate , 50,000 tonnes of lead concentrate and more than 25,000 tonnes of copper concentrate a year. A jewel indeed.


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Scottie,

Well Marakand have held reasonably steady so far, but of course there is limited liquidity, and some recipients of the free share distribution are bound to cash in straight away, so once it has settled down, i'm planning ot buy a few more.

With the free allocation, adding in some future pruchases will still give me a very low average price, and I am confident in the ability of management to deliver.

Yes, like you just waiting for the right opportunity to buy some to add to my divvi !