AN INTERVIEW WITH LARRY CICCARELLI,
CHAIRMAN OF GLOBESTAR MINING
(As of February 26, 2008)
We are here with Larry Ciccarelli, who has played a
prominent role in both the founding of and the development
of Globestar Mining Corp.
David Pescod: Larry, can you give us some of the background
to your affiliation with this company?
Larry Ciccarelli: As founders, we began investing in the
Dominican Republic in 1997 through a company that I am
partnered in called Karr Securities Inc. We began in 1997
and through a series of transactions, we took control of
the wholly-owned subsidiary of Globestar today – CMD in
2000.
It was an easy transaction for us to do at that time
because when we purchased the CMD subsidiary from
Falconbridge, not only did we receive all those Falconbridge’s
non nickel exploration assets, we also purchased
the data, the team, the offices, and what not.
Thereby in purchasing CMD, along with it came the Falconbridge
trained team that was headed by Julio Espaillat,
who is still with us today and is our country manager.
Subsequent to that, I believe it was in 2002, we acquired
the Cerro de Maimon deposit after we had received approval
for an RTO with a company called Boreale Exploration
Inc. out of Quebec. Through the years after this
acquisition of Cerro de Maimon, we did two feasibility
studies one with Pincock Allen and Holt updated with
Behre Dolbear and then we brought JP Chauvin in 2006
and updated those feasibility studies.
D.P: There had been a few personnel changes, Mr.
Fisher making a recent exit and you resuming the Chairmanship…
is there something there one should know?
L.C: Going back to 1997, when Karr Securities was making
an investment into the Dominican Republic, we were
also making an investment at that time between 1997 and
2000 with a company called Ambrex, which is Karmin
Exploration today.
Karmin is a large zinc resource in Brazil and Bill Fisher
was the founding President of that company and that’s
how we got to know Bill and he is the still the CEO of Karmin
today. Karr Securities is the controlling shareholder
of Karmin. Bill resigned to pursue other opportunities and
Karmin is one of those other opportunities.
D.P: All of this is a preamble to what is really becoming
an exciting story. A mine is actually getting built. We
have so many projects around the world that are stalled
because of environmental concerns, permitting, nationalistic
concerns, etc. That’s a nice little mine shaping up in
the Dominican and it looks like you could be on production
in July?
L.C: That is correct. With that being said, keep in mind
this was a long haul for us. Again, we began working on
this deposit in 2003 through two feasibility studies mentioned
so it has been a long time coming, but we maintained
our focus and kept moving the project forward.
D.P: There are a lot of people with a lot of respect for the
technical team out of the Dominican that is building this.
Any comments on that?
L.C: Getting back to our country manager, a gentleman by
the name of Julio Espaillat who is a former Falconbridge
employee for 13 years, as well as our mine manager, a
gentleman by the name of Jose Antonio Ruiz. Jose Antonio
was the mine manager at Pueblo Viejo, one of the largest
gold mines in the Americas. In the area, surrounding
the Cerro de Maimon mine, we have the Falcondo nickel
operation as well.
Thus, between Pueblo Viejo and Falcondo,
we are in a mining district, so there is a skilled labor
pool in the area. I think we were fortunate enough to
get our project built before the Barrick operation, but with
those two gentlemen and obviously adding a couple of
expatriates operationally everything seems to be running
quite smoothly down in the Dominican. In addition, with
Eric Olson, GlobeStar VP of Projects, he is supervising
and responsible for the construction and commencing of
production for GlobeStar.
Eric is the engine behind GlobeStar. We have a good team and all should be mentioned,
as well as a good contractor RSW, an engineering
firm Met Chem and mining contractor Sococo.
D.P: When you reach production, the suggestion is that
you could have nice cash flow, approaching $100 million a
year. Is that true?
L.C: That is correct. It’s great to have current commodity
prices. When we first started investing in the Dominican
Republic, we were looking at $0.50 copper. So yes, if the
current commodity prices stay the same, those are the
types of economics that we will see out of this mine.
D.P: You also have the nickel asset right beside the play. What kind of size do you think those assets are today?
L.C: We issued a press release last Monday using a 1% cut off. Our resources are at 6.2 million tonnes at 1 ½% nickel and using a .9% cut off, we are over 7 million tonnes at 1.4%. The drill has not stopped. What type of resources are potentially out there? I think we set a goal for ourselves to get to the 10 million tonnes. Given the press release from Monday, I think that goal is pretty reachable. We are drilling one hole approximately every three days.
D.P: Wow! We notice several analysts are following the stock these days as we get closer to production startup. By the way, what is the exact date expected for start up?
L.C: We think summer of 2008. Realistically, July or August is a realistic time frame in terms of start up.
D.P: Now there are several analysts following this stock at this time and they seem to have expectations from anywhere
between $2.50 and $3.00 a share based on the copper and of course no one knows what to think about the
nickel at this point. Any thoughts on these expectations?
L.C: I think based on current commodity prices; those types of targets are pretty achievable given the financial matrix of the mine. However, I believe the ratings are conservative based on the commodity prices they are using for valuation.
We continue to drill for nickel and we continue to look at exploration on the base metal side on the Maimon belt that we call it – the massive sulphide belt surrounding Cerro de Maimon. It’s two-fold. We are going to look at mine life extension and also production expansion as we continue to explore for additional resources on the mine side. On the nickel side, we will see what happens here. We need to do develop alternatives to the Falcondo smelter. Now
that’s not to say that Falcondo may or may not take our feed and that’s just one possibility, but Falcondo cannot be our only alternative. So we want to look at developing some alternative to processing our ore, or shipping our ore, or whatever the other alternative can be. We are just on the beginning stages on our nickel exploration and now that we have the 10 million tonnes in sight, we know what type of resources that we potentially can have and based on that,
we need to develop alternatives.
D.P: I guess we have to end this with something like a question like, okay, if you could only buy one stock today other than your own (and it has to be a double) what would it be?
L.C: I really like all these single-mine producers (the Sherwood’s, the Capstone’s, the Roca’s) or ot hers who are financed and about to achieve that status although they have all moved up over the last 30 or 60 days. Given this environment, these one-mine producers, I think you’ll see a consolidation in the industry at some point. It doesn’t make sense in the long term for any of these companies (including ourselves) to be a one-mine company. I like to continue to focus on these one-mine (whether it’s base metals or precious metal companies) I think there is some upside. I do not know if there is a double but in consolidation there is always upside.
D.P: Thank you for your time, Mr. Ciccarelli.
Disclosure: Globestar Mining: Canaccord Capital covers this stock and has a Speculative Buy rating on it. (Speculative buy: Stocks bear significantly higher risk that typically cannot be valued by normal fundamental criteria. Investments in the stock may result in material loss.)
David Pescod 780-408-1750 Debbie Lewis 780-408-1748 Fax: 780-408-1501