I think the longer the BGL shares are halted from trading, the longer DVP share price will continue to underperform.

The market still thinks DVP somehow made the "mistake" of digging out more dirt than gold at Bellevue Gold as the stock price has not recovered.

If you think the market is wrong (and I think they are), then this could be an opportunity to initiate a holding.

I'm going to sit tight for now and wait for the news.

Agreed @edgescape considering that where Develop Global (DVP) drill and blast is where BGL's Geo's tell them to, so if they've dug out the wrong rock (and it is rock there, hard rock), then that's on BGL, not DVP. The downside however is that since DVP have now finished up at both the Beta Hunt gold mine (was owned by Karora Resources, which was acquired by Westgold [WGX] last year who decided to change mining services contractors) and the Mt Marion lithium mine (owned by MinRes [MIN] and Ganfeng Lithium Co. Ltd of China), with both contracts finishing late in 2024, DVP only have a single client in their mining services division, and that's Bellevue Gold (BGL), so if Bellevue get themselves into trouble, that could certainly impact DVP, and it's that uncertainty that is creating the volatility in the DVP share price while BGL remains suspended from trading; BGL's trading halt was rolled into a trading suspension last night because the halt timed out - trading halts can only last until the end of the trading day following the trading day that they begin on - at which point the ASX will roll them into a trading suspension even if the company (BGL in this case) haven't requested a trading suspension - but BGL did request a trading suspension after the market had closed yesterday (Thursday). They could have avoided that by releasing the awaited announcement containing the updated (downgraded) production guidance and reason(s) for it, but they clearly didn't have that announcement ready yesterday, and they didn't have it ready today either, and this request for a trading suspension covers all of next week, up until Friday 4th April (see here: Suspension-from-Quotation-26-March-2025-BGL.PDF).

If it does take them that long (another week), that suggests to me that the issues behind this are probably more complex and may require further investigation by Bellevue.

So if BGL get themselves into financial trouble, and/or have to halt production at Bellevue (the mine and mill, which has the same name as the company) for any reason, even if because of an injury or fatality (which is not the case on this occasion of course), then it could place DVP in a position where they have zero income until they become cashflow positive at Woodlawn. The business strategy with DVP is for their mining services division profits to help fund the project development at Woodlawn, Sulphur Springs, etc., so being down to a single client isn't great, and then having that single client take so long to determine how much they need to downgrade their own production guidance by, and why, is another question mark, which some people are interpreting as a risk.

You could class Woodlawn as a mining service client, but that is a 100%-owned asset of DVP, so I don't include it as part of their mining services division because they are their own client at Woodlawn, i.e. nobody is paying them to provide services at Woodlawn, like BGL are paying them to provide mining services at Bellevue.

I am currently holding BGL and DVP in my SMSF, two of the smallest positions thankfully because I took some off the table last week to buy something else. I'll likely ride out this volatility with DVP because I do have faith and trust in Bill Beament, however I can't see myself holding on to my BGL shares. This is the third time I'll have been burned holding BGL. I am a slow learner sometimes.

Check out the volatility with the DVP share price over the past 5 days (below, right):

$3.20 down to $2.81 and everything in between.

Just today (Fri 28-Mar-2025), DVP was up +1.7% @ $2.97 @ 11:54am, and were then down -5% from there (or -3.4% from yesterday's $2.92 close) @ $2.82 just before the closing single price auction (CSPA), before closing @ $2.85, being -2.4% for the day.

That AI-driven technical analysis from Commsec below that five day share price graph above refers to DVP's SP move over recent months rather than over the past week, and makes far more sense when you zoom out and look at their one year chart (below):

When you look at that one year chart (with daily data points) you can see they seem to still be rising up within a channel from November through to now, and they haven't broken down out of that upwards sloping channel yet.

All that said, I'm not adding to DVP here. They're a small position in my SMSF and they probably deserve to be right now, due to the various risks to the business, including single client risk in their mining services division, plus development risk with Sulphur Springs, plus commodity price risk with Woodlawn and Sulphur Springs. For many people zinc still stinks, and while copper is having a bit of a resurgence in positive sentiment once again, there's more zinc at Woodlawn than copper, so sentiment around zinc will be a factor.

Disc: Holding DVP and BGL. :-(

What the Hell is Going on with Bellevue? [Money of Mine podcast, 27-March-2025]

@Bear77 My understanding of why there is only one service contract remaining is because boots are needed for Woodlawn.

Also last month DVP withdrew guidance for their mining services division. My read again points to Woodlawn and lesser extent Sulphur Springs (haul road in June) but then my rational thoughts and my confirmation bias could be wrong!

Anyway if BGL turns out worse then DVP will need to quickly look at other work.

I believe if DVP needs to have a decent mining services business then I dare say they need to be at the same size and scale of Minres (minus the governance issues obviously!)

You guys may be overthinking it a bit. The odds its a problem that shuts the mine and DVP loses the contract is very tiny even if its a grade/met issue. There is a margin to work with. The risk would really be in actually repaying the remaining debt, maybe buying out hedges and topping up working capital to support the growth plan (even if that is revised down too). With what little is known, the biggest risk is in the equity of BGL.

Remember CAI has all these issues and the mine never stopped through out admin too.

@BkrDzn I am merely trying to echo what the market is thinking right now by observing the price action and news about this and not overthinking anything

I see opportunity here but would rather wait for now.

If the market thought the contract was at risk, DVP would be down a lot more than it has been.

@edgescape I remember watching an interview with Bill when DVP had the 3 services contracts and he said that was about the right amount while they got Woodlawn running, then when WGX acquired Karora and decided to use someone else at Beta Hunt, and the contract at Mt Marion was also not renewed, I understand that the positive spin was that the majority of those workers and a fair bit of that equipment could be utilised at Woodlawn so all good. I'm not sure it was ideal, but Bill made it work.

As a mining services contractor who also develops mining projects (a wanna-be mini-MinRes if you like) DVP should have been able to scale up to also develop Woodlawn at the same time rather than intentionally dropping two thirds of their services clients to develop Woodlawn. I could be wrong but my understanding is that losing those other two services contracts was more due to decisions made by those mine owners, rather than Bill's intention; he just rolled with it.

@BkrDzn Thanks for the info about the likely scope of the possible issues at Bellevue and the outcome at Calidus' Warrawoona Gold Project possibly being a worse-case scenario comparison for Bellevue in terms of the mine continuing to operate and the mining contractor being retained to do their stuff there.

I wasn't seriously considering that Bellevue would shut down; they have after all got one of the highest grade gold deposits of scale in Australia there and whatever the issues are, they can be fixed, they're unlikely to be structural. If their share price falls enough, I would expect they would be a serious takeover target because of their gold, as the MoM podcast crew suggested in the poddy I linked to.

The main issue last year, as I understand it, is that the rock is a lot harder than BGL and DVP expected initially, which together with a slower roll-out of infrastructure and services underground than Develop expected from BGL, has hampered their progress in terms of metres drilled, so they were falling behind against the mine plan. This has improved a lot in December and January according to Bill at DVP (in that Hole Truth podcast - episode #77 that was linked to here) and the DVP announcement on Thursday afternoon said that the "March quarter development metres and ore tonnes mined are both forecasted to be +20% above the December quarter’s results" suggesting that February and March weren't too bad either in terms of drilling and blasting.

So, the reasons why BGL are downgrading production guidance now are likely a combination of still being behind where they thought they would be right now, despite recent improvements in drilling rates, combined with less gold produced from the ore they have processed, which could be due to a variety of factors that we have already discussed here, and in the MoM podcast on Thursday (linked to in this thread by me). Point being these things can be fixed as long as the gold is actually there, which it seems it still is.

No doubt one of the reasons why they are taking their time with this announcement is that they want their upgraded production guidance to be realistic and achievable, so there is likely some work going on to make sure that everybody at BGL (& possibly at DVP also) are in agreement about that, because the last thing they want to do is release new lower guidance and then have to downgrade again in another few months.

So my thoughts now, since watching the MoM poddy and digesting some other stuff, including your comment @BkrDzn which makes sense to me, is that even if BGL get smashed next week (or whenever the come out of the trading suspension), I'll either add some or just bottom drawer my position and wait for either a takeover or BGL to get back on track. I don't think they're anywhere close to VA at this point, I was just going to sell out because they've been a perennial disappointment for me, particularly with their two capital raises during the past couple of years after telling everybody that they didn't need to raise capital within 2 weeks of raising on both occasions. But selling out again this time might be a mistake in light of their likely situation, so I'll now probably just hold and see what happens.

With DVP I was also trying to work out what the market was getting so jittery about, like @edgescape was, and I don't intend to sell my DVP, as I said before. It is Bill Beament after all. I am however aware of the risks to the business, which I was outlining. I do expect some SP volatility with DVP. I sold half my DVP recently at $3.11/share on March 25th, and I also sold just over half of my BGL on the same day @ $1.325, so I have already locked some profits in on those two. I was reducing those positions to buy some Spartan (SPR, who are under T/O offer from RMS) and Capricorn (CMM) which I believe will do well if gold stays up here or rises further. I bought SPR for $1.755 and they're already up at $1.94 in a few days, so swings and roundabouts. I'll be underwater on my remaining BGL when they come out of the suspension, but at least my BGL position is now less than half the shares that I held a week ago. Things could always be worse.

@Bear77

My thinking is once those other 2 contracts had ended he could have had the choice to look at other work, but instead decided to get boots into Woodlawn. This is how I read it anyway.

Grade rec is the problem. Mining rates above processing so DVP not even close to the issue.

BGL is still in trading halt unfortunately as they are still unable to provide guidance. DVP getting sold off today on that update.

It would be a part contributor to the DVP decline today.

Yeah, I'm keeping my powder dry today @edgescape coz I don't know how far down this thing goes from here. All miners are being sold down today, except for a bunch of gold miners. The outlook for Dr. Copper - and zinc - is not so good if we get recessions and global growth slows significantly, which looks fairly likely if these Trump tariffs stand, or get increased further.

I'm not entirely sure if DVP is getting sold down much today on the continued suspension of Bellevue (BGL), although that obviously doesn't help sentiment around DVP, but if the punters are thinking this is the end for BGL, they're mistaken. If I was BGL management, I'd be attempting to extend this trading suspension as long as possible also, and calling out (as they have) that a resumption of trading in BGL shares would result in an uninformed market, i.e. punters trading in BGL without all of the facts they need to make rational decisions, which is always going to secure a continued suspension, as it has today.

BGL only have $100m in debt and no principal debt repayments due until CY27. Additionally they called out today (in their Voluntary-suspension-update.PDF) that their estimated cash and gold on hand position at 31 March 2025 totalled ~A$49 million (December 2024 quarter pro-forma A$81 million), so while their cash balance has reduced, they're not in deep doo-doo yet, unless there's more that they're not telling us.

They're aware of issues with grade reconcilliation against their model, however they have called out that these three stopes were on the edges of the ore body, so there's always the possibility that the drilling strayed outside of the mineralised ore (the ore containing significant gold). They have also mentioned rapid mining rates being a contributing factor ("Rapid mining rates due to ramp up also led to some dilution of grade"), which lends some credence to Matty Mikals' theory on the MoM podcast that I linked to above (in a previous post in this thread) that Develop may have been on laser survey control rather than geo control (see here) and the benefits of doing that are speed (see here).

The downside of using survey control via lasers in that situation (narrow vein gold, and edge of the orebody) is the risk of leaving some gold behind in the wall, i.e. mining ore that wasn't part of the mine plan because it contains very little or no gold, due to mining in a straight line when the gold doesn't always run in a straight line.

MoM will definitely break down today's announcement by BGL in their (MoM's) podcast today, but we'll have to wait a couple more hours until they release that.

Addition: Correction: Never say "definitely". MoM did NOT discuss BGL today - they instead played an interview with Hedley Widdup, MD of Lion Selection Group, which was recorded on Monday. All about junior gold companies (see here if interested). Very interesting, but not relevant to this thread.

My way of thinking about it [Bellevue] is that the gold is there, but they may have left some of it in the wall while they were mining these 3 stopes on the edge of the orebody, and that isn't a structural problem because they can adjust their methods so as not to make that mistake again, such as use geo control instead of survey control if that has been the issue, and they can also go back and get the gold they have left behind, if that is what has happened.

Any way I look at it, it's not a terminal issue for BGL, as long as they can find and process the gold that their model said was there. If on the other hand their resource model is flawed and they don't have the gold they thought they had, that's a bigger problem obviously. Either way, I don't think there's any immediate threat from this to DVP who continue to be the mining contractors at Bellevue. I think that rather than the market smashing DVP today based solely on the BGL update, it is more likely that a lot of the DVP selling has more to do with DVP's own projects and what they could now be worth during Trump 2.0 and global trade wars with reduced global growth and reduced demand for copper, zinc, etc.

Disc: I hold smallish positions in both DVP and BGL. BGL remains suspended. DVP is trading, however I did not add to my DVP position today or sell any DVP - I want to wait a bit longer and see how low they go before making a decision to top up. I don't think DVP or BGL are going broke any time soon, so we have time.

The issue on the BGL side is people will start to think its DCN2.0.

Even if its not that bad and this is an air pocket, I roughly guess they will have to raise at least $200m with $100m into the debt. Not sure how steep the price will be. This will hurt but not the end of the world.

I do note they said a similar problem last quarter and gave the same reason but it was to be a temporary blip that was a "feature" of the mine plan. Given guidance for 2H25, the expectation was/is that'd be past the margins into said juicier ore. 3Q25 guide was for ~36koz but delivered 25.7koz (-29%). It can be hard to fathom the same reason should still apply i.e. they are skirting the margins into higher grade zones. Maybe pushing aggressive mining rates is leading to poor outcomes which is a BGL on site governance issue than a DVP issue perse. All in all, there is real reason to be concerned there is a reserve modelling problem coming to light rather than a mining problem.

My opinion is that it is unclear if the issue is systemic or not, but its further evidence that the risk of it being systemic is higher than before.

As a through exercise. If reserve modelling has a systemic issue, and grade recs going forward are say 20-30% lower than modelled (todays release is -29% to mineplan/guidance) then its a big problem and that is how it can be a repeat of DCN. If they can maintain the growth trajectory but this implied lower grade (backsolve AISC to be ~A3000/koz), they can make money even with the outstanding hedge book, but it'll be a lot lower. If they can reoptimise the mineplan to up the grade but this results in the growth plan being abandoned, you end up in a similar position. Either way, there is a case BGL trades 50-75% lower in a gold bull market.

30th April 2025: Much can happen in a month!

Here's what the DVP chart looked like a month ago (on 28th March, note: the chart is for 5 days only):

And here is what their 12 month chart looked like on that day (28th March):

I was saying they hadn't really broken down out of their sharply upward sloping trading channel yet at the time (on the chart above, so they still seemed to be in an uptrend despite the recent falls), but they certainly did fall out the bottom of that channel during the the next few weeks.

Here's how they landed today, 12-month chart used:

The sharp drop down to just over $2/share was due to both the negative sentiment around copper and zinc based on tariff-fueled global growth concerns, plus the length of time that BGL (Bellevue Gold, DVP's only mining services client other than the work they do at their own 100%-owned Woodlawn project) were in that trading halt for over their poor March quarter gold production numbers that prompted a big review and a resetting (lowering) of production expectations going forwards, as well as a capital raising to clean up their near-term hedgebook (pay out a lot of their hedges) and add around $40 million to their working capital.

The sharp rebound in the DVP share price to back over $3/share and up to a new 12-month high share price of $3.32 during the day today has been on the back of:

1. Sentiment around, and the outlook for, Copper and Zinc improving on the back of the 90 day tariff pause and hopes that much of that madness might be over;
2. The market being happy that DVP's contract at Bellevue is still solid and Bellevue's issues aren't related to DVP's work (i.e. they mined what they were directed to mine) and are not likely to negatively impact DVP, other than a reduction to 5 Jumbos (from 6) being announced by BGL as part of their review and new mining plan;
3. The markets isn't particularly concerned that the Strategic Review currently underway at BGL is likely to result in a change of control that is likely to put DVP's mining services contract at Bellevue at risk;
4. The market was very happy with DVP's March Quarterly Activities Report; and their Cash Flow Report, released on 28th April; and
5. This one is just me adding one and one and possibly getting eleven, but it seems likely to me that there's a fund, or possibly Bill Beament himself, hoovering up DVP shares on-market, and if it's an insto/fund, they may have been trying to get up to their desired position by month's end, which was today.

That's all just my thoughts and opinions, and could be wrong, or incomplete, but there it is, FWIW.

Here's the daily trading data for DVP for the previous 11 trading days in reverse-chronological order, so latest at the top:

Including today, you've got the share price rising by more than +3% on 7 of those 12 days, and by more than +5% on 4 of those 7 days and by more than +12% on 2 of those 4 days.

It's a +57% SP rise from $2.06 on April 9th to today's close of $3.24. In just 12 trading days. That's certainly a sharp sentiment U-turn! More a V than a U.

I got lucky in that I trimmed a few positions back in March, including BGL @ $1.31 on the 10th and again @ $1.325 on the 21st, plus DVP @ $3.11 also on the 21st March, and used those funds to purchase Spartan (SPR) at $1.755 which was an arbitrage play on the takeover of SPR by RMS which I believe will go ahead unless somebody comes over the top with a higher offer, so I wanted some funds in Spartan for that reason.

I had no inkling that it was coming, but 5 days later on March 26th BGL went into that trading halt and DVP started falling hard.

Based on conversations on this site, including in this forum thread, plus some further research which did include listening to and fact checking the MoM podcast lads when they discussed the situation at Bellevue during the BGL trading suspension, I decided to increase my positions in both DVP and BGL to take advantage of the falling share prices of both - BGL after they emerged from the trading suspension, and DVP during it - so I topped up DVP @ $2.16 on April 7th and again at $2.07 on April 9th, and I topped up BGL @ $0.90 on April 15th and again at $0.87 on April 28th (two days ago).

I had originally bought into BGL at $1.225 back on Feb 17th, so I'm still underwater on the third of those that I did not sell in March, but happy enough with having an outsized position (relative to my other positions) in BGL at this point. My view on BGL is that they'll likely either sort themselves out or else they'll get taken over by a larger player at a decent premium.

Similarly, I had originally got back into DVP at $2.99 on Feb 17th when they were rising at a good clip, so I was sitting on paper losses during most of April for the half of those that I had not sold in March, up until yesterday when they blew back through $3/share and rose even more today.

Meanwhile I took some profits on Spartan (SPR) at $1.895 (on April 3rd) and then at $2.10 (on April 14th), and they closed today at $2.03 but have been as high as $2.27 on the Tuesday following the Easter weekend (April 22nd) after making intraday highs of $2.28 during the trading days on either side of that Easter long weekend. I never pick the bottom and I usually trim too early, but it's been working for me most of the time, so I'm sticking with the same strategy.

Those trades were all in my SMSF where I am limited to ASX300 companies, and SPR, BGL and DVP are all in the ASX300 index, so I hold all three in my SMSF for that reason. Companies like LYL and GNG (and SXE and WGB and EGL) who are not in the ASX300 are instead held in my other real money portfolio which has no restrictions.

Here on SM I did add SPR to my portfolio here in March but sold them at a 9.8% profit in April; I added BGL here on the day the emerged from the trading suspension (April 15th), but I have not added DVP here, which of course meant that they have massively outperformed the other two in the second half of April. Oh well, as Claude says, you can't pat all the fluffy dogs; at least I've patted that one in my super, just not here.

I could be wrong about the increase in a substantial holding for DVP, or the establishment of a new one; we'll soon know if a corresponding notification is lodged in the coming days. However that seems like a reasonable explanation for at least part of this massive spike up that DVP have had, particularly in the past two trading days (yesterday and today). I'm certainly not complaining...

P.S. Here's a link to various broker reports on DVP: https://www.develop.com.au/research-reports/

Disclosure: I hold DVP, BGL and SPR in my SMSF, and I hold BGL here currently. Subject to change without notice.

@Bear77 Thanks for the summary. Looks like no real surprises there. I only had a brief look at the financials and only thing that stuck out was the increase in staff and production costs. Probably expected given Woodlawn is about to come online.

Unlike yourself, I couldn't find the time to trade DVP. It would be too much admin work for me when I do my tax return one being involved in a couple of the cap raises including the one where I got the options that I already excised. And just now looking I added quite a few under 3.00 in the last couple of years.