New pit designs at Condor Gold’s (LON:CNR) La India gold project in Nicaragua have boosted its potential value by more than 50%.
The study, by renowned mine design consulting group Whittle, was completed last year but the results were unable to be released due to Condor’s strategic review and sale plans.
Condor, though, scrapped its plans to find a buyer earlier in the week citing the heavy drop in the share price since it started the process.
Mark Child, chief executive, aid he was pleased finally to be able to publish the optimisation study and the 'materially improved' figures it contained.
Under three scenarios looked at by Whittle, net present value (NPV) rose on average by 56% and by 78% for the PFS case, while alI-in-sustaining-cash costs were under US$700 per oz gold for all production scenarios.
Based on reserves/resources and technical studies used in earlier studies the average NPV of the project rises to US$196mln.
Condor points out that this compares to its current market capitalisation of US$12mln and equal to a price-to-book ratio of 0.06 times.
The rate of return was 30% while the amount of gold recovered using the amended mine design rose by 29% to 866k oz gold for the La India open pit, as the pit pushes deeper.
Average gold production for the first 5 years rises by 22% from 91,000oz to 165,000oz with life of mine production between 796,000 oz to 1,437,000 oz.
“The average pay back of upfront capital costs is between two and three production years highlighting the outstanding economics and versatility of La India Project," said Child.
Shares rose 19% to 23.8p.