Black Cat Syndicate - ASX:BC8
Introduction to Company
Cormac Harten
2025-05-04
I will begin to analyse Black Cat Syndicate ASX:BX8. This will be the introduction to this analysis, starting with basic price analysis, a view on annual reports and comparison to the index. Next steps will be to access the financials (balance sheets, key ratios etc), dig deeper into production targets and the gold prices impact on financials and production over time.
First Glance
Price & Volume
I’ve loaded data for Black Cat, the ASX 200 and the ASX 300 Metals and Mining index. I’ve taken volume and price, using the daily adjusted price. See below summary of the data.
| Series | Date from | Date to |
Year Open Price |
Latest Adjusted Price |
YTD % Growth |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ASX 200 | 01-Jan-15 | 02-May-25 | 8201.200 | 8238.00 | 0.45 |
| ASX 300 Metals & Mining | 01-Jan-15 | 02-May-25 | 5318.400 | 5335.70 | 0.33 |
| Black Cat Syndicate | 29-Jan-18 | 02-May-25 | 0.575 | 0.94 | 63.48 |
Taking Black Cats first day of trading as the start of the series I’ve made an index to measure its performance against the market indices which I have already loaded.
An index value of 200 would be doubling your money from the start date. I’ve added a data labels which represents the gain in percentage terms.
Correlation: ASXMM Daily Returns vs BC8. A basic relationship between the two variables.
- 0.00 – 0.10 = Very Weak, Essentially no linear relationship
- 0.10 – 0.30 = Weak, Small relationship; variables move somewhat independently
- 0.30 – 0.50 = Moderate, Noticeable, moderate linear relationship
- 0.50 – 0.70 = Strong, Clear and meaningful linear association
- 0.70 – 1.00 = Very Strong, Very strong or near-perfect linear relationship
We can see to date 2025 has the strongest correlation, while it is still moderate. There has been ups and downs over the years but generally there increased correlation. This should be expected as interest (volume traded) increases in the stock.
Annual Reports
I want to take a view on market performance post the publishing of the annual reports.
| Financial Year | Report Announcement Date | AISC (Currency) | Ounces Produced (FY) | Adj. Close Before | 1 Week Gain | 1 Month Gain | 3 Month Gain |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 30-Jun-2018 | Not reported (exploration phase) | 0 (exploration only) | 0.255 | -9.8% | -11.76% | -25.49% |
| 2019 | 30-Jun-2019 | Not reported (exploration phase) | 0 (exploration only) | 0.265 | 28.3% | 45.28% | 71.7% |
| 2020 | 30-Jun-2020 | Not reported; study phase | 0 (resource base ~884,000 oz) | 0.850 | 2.35% | 0.59% | -10% |
| 2021 | 30-Jun-2021 | Not reported; advancing projects | 0 (no production yet) | 0.620 | -3.23% | -3.23% | -14.52% |
| 2022 | 30-Jun-2022 | A$1,510/oz (forecast, Kal East) | No production; reserves focus | 0.310 | 3.23% | 27.42% | 1.61% |
| 2023 | 30-Jun-2023 | A$1,892/oz (Paulsens Restart Study) | ~42,000 oz/year (restart plan) | 0.385 | -7.79% | -6.49% | -45.45% |
| 2024 | 30-Jun-2024 | A$1,724/oz (Kal East); A$1,613/oz (Coyote) | Minimum 52,000 oz (Myhree forecast; mining commenced) | 0.305 | 14.75% | 8.2% | 50.82% |
We seen the correlation with the mining index has often been weak. As a result there are limitations to the relatively simple approach that follows below. I am proceeding in this way as it is relatively consistent with the first glance I’ve take so far to understand the company. I may glean more information from a time-series model but for now this will suffice.
To assess the price reaction following each annual report, I have calculated the Cumulative Abnormal Returns (CAR) over 7, 30, and 90 days after the announcement, the same windows as the above. This approach allows me to isolate the portion of price movement that deviates from expected market returns (the mining index), giving a clearer picture of how the announcement may have influenced investor behaviour.
| Year | Event_Date | CAR_7 | CAR_30 | CAR_90 | Correlation_r | Correlation_Strength |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | 2018-06-30 | -5.3019515 | -29.754295 | -9.763003 | 0.0003128 | Very Weak |
| 2019 | 2019-06-30 | 30.7310587 | 54.446355 | 68.310948 | 0.1118567 | Weak |
| 2020 | 2020-06-30 | -0.7826250 | -15.161202 | -13.894076 | 0.3231078 | Moderate |
| 2021 | 2021-06-30 | -7.6529721 | -12.582980 | 7.702642 | 0.2310986 | Weak |
| 2022 | 2022-06-30 | 17.7804381 | 20.219289 | 17.210986 | 0.2836195 | Weak |
| 2023 | 2023-06-30 | 0.7509324 | -7.089365 | -49.027301 | 0.1231911 | Weak |
| 2024 | 2024-06-30 | 16.4650152 | 11.394655 | 65.564915 | 0.3234212 | Moderate |
While these CAR results help highlight periods of abnormal performance following annual reports, it’s important to recognize that in years where the correlation between BC8 and the benchmark index was weak or very weak, the market model’s explanatory power is limited. As such, these figures should not be over interpreted without considering the underlying correlation strength, which affects the reliability of the abnormal return estimates.
For example, the 2024 announcement 1-week gain was 14.75%, without adjusting for broader market effects. The 7-day Cumulative Abnormal Return (CAR) was 16.47%, meaning that after accounting for the mining index’s movements (the expected return), the stock outperformed by an additional ~1.7%.
However, since the correlation with the mining index that year was only moderate (r ≈ 0.32), the market model’s ability to explain the expected return is limited. Therefore, although CAR offers a sharper lens, the relatively weak-to-moderate correlation means I take its precision with more than a pinch of salt.
What next?
Financials
I’ve been using yahoo finance accessed through R or Python for pricing and financial data. The Python script that I use to load financials for the majors is returning null values for the financials, balance sheet and cashflows is returning null values. I suspect that this is due to Black Cat being a Junior.
I will work around and alternative, a free API being the most desirable. Manual extraction or a python script for the financial filings will be the next course of action failing that.
Gold Price
Accessing the Gold Price is easy through Yahoo Finance, next step is to assess its impact on the majors, then the juniors and finally Black Cat.
Gold Production
Here I plan to first, check and update the calculations I made when reviewing ASX listed Gold miners. Approx 6 months ago I took AISC and production ounces by company (see image below). I want to measure BC8 against these companies on the same metrics. For that I need to update the data, check the currency conversion where applicable and plot BC8.
