Denham Capital: Flavour on the Public Markets Irrelevant

The current flavour of the month or the year means nothing to Bert Koth, who is managing director and partner at Denham Capital.

“I can only say from our point of view we do not care about the public markets sentiment,” Koth said about commodities in an interview with Investing News Network at the International Mining and Resources Conference (IMARC) in Melbourne, Australia.

Koth was at IMARC to take part in a panel discussing the top projects of the last 12 months. He helpfully noted early though that at Denham they don’t comment on other people’s projects.

“Unless you are trading on public markets on the way up, unless there’s an upswing in momentum, I think anything that is heavily promoted on the public markets, when you get in after the train has left the station, is a great way to lose money.”

Koth was for the most part blasting lithium, which he noted public markets were excited about in 2018 — but not so much in 2019.

“When the newspapers write about it, it’s usually time, the time to get out rather than to get in.”

Koth took the opportunity to explain Denham’s approach to projects, saying that first the firm backs management teams before they match them up with projects, making the group commodity agnostic, but not jurisdiction agnostic.

“(Denham) is sensitive about jurisdictions that try to confiscate capital,” he said, adding that extreme-risk jurisdictions will never represent a large portion of the company’s portfolio.

He added that, for the resources industry, resource nationalism is even more of an issue, because government interest in getting more revenue out of resources always lags behind the resources cycle.

For more of Koth’s thoughts, listen to the full interview above. You can also click here for our full playlist of IMARC interviews.

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Securities Disclosure: I, Scott Tibballs, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.

Editorial Disclosure: The Investing News Network does not guarantee the accuracy or thoroughness of the information reported in the interviews it conducts. The opinions expressed in these interviews do not reflect the opinions of the Investing News Network and do not constitute investment advice. All readers are encouraged to perform their own due diligence.