Hi @NewyRookie - I used to own Spartan when they were called Gascoyne Resources, and I did briefly make some coin from holding them when they first started to build the Dalgaranga gold mill - or GNG (who I hold today and usually hold) built it for them, however I sold out during the commissioning phase after reading a report that suggested that the company was being run by geo's at the time that had limited understanding of mechanical and chemical engineering and that the PFS and DFS had been done mostly in-house with some help, but that GNG had not been part of that, and then GNG had been awarded the EPC contract to build the mill. It struck me that there was a fair bit of risk that, as big as the mill was going to be (it's a decent sized mill - initial annual ore processing capacity was supposed to be 2.5 million tonnes), there was likely to be some bottlenecks and ore processing issues.

It turned out to be a good sell, because I locked in profits and Gascoyne subsequently almost went into VA a number of times as their grade reconcilliation was all over the place and they had to do a number of mill mods, and their costs blew out while their gold production fell. In short, they had designed the mill for a specific type of ore, and they had a lot of "other" ore that they needed to process and their gold recoveries from that "other" ore was sub-optimal (i.e. dismal). And they didn't have the gold that they thought they had where they thought it was. It turns out that there was plenty of gold there, they just weren't digging it up and their mill wasn't processing the ore that they were digging up very well.

So a number of capital raises later, included some recapitalisations (rescue raises) that severely diluted existing shareholders and severely increased their share count (quantity of shares on issue), they survived by the skin of their teeth, changed their name to Spartan Resources (SPR, were GCY previously) and it's been all good since then.

The twitter (X) post that you mentioned @NewyRookie is from SPR's latest announcement: Never Never and Pepper deliver exceptional assays (09-July-2024).

Other announcements can be accessed from their investor page on their website: https://spartanresources.com.au/investor/asx-announcements/

Here's the first page of that announcement from 9 days ago:

Interestingly, I hold GNG (GR Engineering Services) who built the Dalgaranga mill for them, and I also hold NRW Holdings (NWH) who have been their contract miners, and NRW took a truckload of GCY shares as part of one of Gascoyne's recapitalisations, which then became Spartan shares when Gascoyne changed their name to Spartan. This was because NRW were owed a lot of money by Gascoyne at the time for the mining work they were doing and had done at Dalgaranga that NRW had not been paid for due to Gascoyne's cashflow issues (Gascoyne Resources were going broke at the time because their costs were higher than their earnings and they couldn't meet their debt repayments). NRW held onto those shares and then sold them during the past year - see here: NRW-Holdings-FY24-Results-Update.PDF (today: 18-July-2024).

Travis from the Money of Mine podcast owns Spartan shares and is bullish on the company.

Here's their 1 year chart (from their website):

Beating the All Ords and rising much the same but with less volatility than the AUD gold price.

They look reasonable on a three year chart also:

That steady downward sloping line at the end of 2022 and the beginning of 2023 was their most recent recapitalisation and when they changed their name from Gascoyne to Spartan. They were suspended from trading during that period, hence the flat line. When companies almost go broke, in this case multiple times, it can be very stressful to be holding them, because when they are in those trading suspensions you never know whether they are heading for VA (and likely a 100% loss for ordinary shareholders) or are going to survive, albeit usually with massive dilution to existing shareholders due to the large CR they almost always need to do just to survive.

To give you an idea of what I mean, have a look at their 10 year chart:

That ten year chart uses monthly datapoints (the three year chart above it uses daily datapoints), so this one doesn't look as busy, but it gives their recent share price rise some context in terms of where the company has come from.

Spartan looks to be in reasonable shape now - they have new management, they appear to be well capitalised, and they're finding more gold, as their recent announcement shows, and their mill has been modified to suit the ore they are processing, so it's working a lot better than it was a few years ago. They are also putting better paydirt (ore) through the mill (more gold per tonne of ore), so they are producing more gold at a lower cost. The gold price rise has also helped them of course.

AU$ Gold on the Left, US$ Gold on the Right.

Source: https://goldprice.org/gold-price-australia.html

Chart data sourced from Commsec and the Spartan website (https://spartanresources.com.au/investor/asx-announcements/). SPR ASX Announcement downloaded from the Spartan website.

Disclosure: I have previously owned GCY, which became SPR. I do not hold SPR. I hold GNG & NWH shares, which were both mentioned in this forum post. My current gold producer exposure in real life is limited to NST, GMD, BGL and PRU (sold WAF yesterday). I am also looking at MEK and MAU as possible explorer/developer plays. I'm still bullish on gold, despite the rises over the past couple of years, and the higher the gold price goes, the better the economics of these gold deposits. It also means more work for LYL and GNG, who I also hold - both E&C companies who design and build gold processing plants (gold mills) - so a "picks and shovels play" on gold. I've gone a bit cold on C79 (Chrysos) for now - they have a bright future, but a limited TAM, and it could take some years for the IT (investment thesis) to play out, so I see better opportunities elsewhere at this point.

I bought back into DVP today - it's run by Bill Beament who built up NST from nothing, and they do have a couple of mining services (contract mining) contracts with high grade gold miners (BGL & Toronto-listed Karora Resources who are being taken over by ASX-listed Westgold - WGX - see here: https://www.listcorp.com/asx/dvp/develop-global-limited/news/mining-services-set-to-generate-c-175m-revenue-3010001.html) plus they are developing their own mines - although those mines will be producing lithium and base metals such as zinc in the mid-term - funding announcement to come during the next 2 weeks I expect for at least one, or possibly two of their main projects - Woodlawn and Pioneer Dome - funding which apparently will NOT involve any placements, so only existing shareholders will get the upside exposure according to Bill here: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tdm-growth-partners/episodes/The-King-of-Kalgoorlie---Bill-Beament--Founder-and-CEO--Develop-Global-S8--E2-e2lu6bs (15th July, so 3 days ago). DVP also have a couple of early stage gold projects that may or may not amount to something down the track, but that's not what I'm buying exposure to right now.

So Spartan is good NOW, but they looked horrible two years ago. And I think NST and GMD have more gold projects and probably more upside from current levels than Spartan. At least investing in SPR now (which I haven't done - but just saying) is a LOT less risky now because of the progress they've made and their considerably better management team now, but the biggest negative is probably that they've had a very good run of late, and there may be better opportunities with greater upside. However, as a momentum trade, if that's what you're into, SPR have had plenty of positive momentum over the past year in particular.

https://spartanresources.com.au/company-overview/