Beyond 3Q

Avion Mines, Finds West African Gold

By Greg Klein

Avion Gold TSX:AVR has its sights set high in West Africa. Open-pit gold mining underway, a new mill to be commissioned, underground production about to begin and continued drilling to build the resources. The plan is to more than double its annual output to 200,000 gold ounces by 2013 and then maintain that rate for a decade, reaching two million ounces. All that is projected to come from Avion’s Tabakoto and Segala mines and Kofi Property in Mali and its Houndé Project in Burkina Faso.

The market remains unimpressed, however. With the release of Avion’s 3Q results, which reported the production of 21,687 gold ounces at $925 per ounce, share prices plunged from $2.04 November 15 to $1.54 10 days later. Then began an unsteady rise to the December 7 open of $1.73. The plunge isn’t surprising, perhaps, since 3Q net profit fell to $US7.2 million or
.02 a share, exactly half the amounts for the same quarter in 2010. So what happened?

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