Anyone following the speculative junior mining space has known that juniors cannot raise capital lately. Naturally, this means that they are cutting back on exploration spending. One would expect this to impact the short-term earnings of companies doing exploration work; however the long-term business fundamentals are unchanged. The world is mining more stuff than it is discovering, and exploration needs to increase just for producers to keep pace with depletion. The bludgeoning that these companies have experienced in the past month is just stunning. One only needs to look at the chart of Boart Longyear (BLY: Australia) the largest hard rock drilling company in the world.

On May 1, the stock closed at 4.19. Yesterday it closed at 1.27. The reason for the decline? Fear. Guys are scared of 2009 repeating. In 2009, Boart saw a dramatic slowdown in demand for drilling and to avert a possible bankruptcy, they did a very dilutive equity offering near the lows. Today, the stock is at a dollar, in 2007, it was over twenty dollars. Dilutive offerings are painful and they leave a very scared shareholder base.

Let’s look at Boart today. Tangible book is $1.65 a share. They earned 21 cents a share in the first half and are looking to pay a 6.4 cents half year dividend (Aussies report earnings on the half year). In 2011, the company reported 35 cents a share of income and paid a11.4 cent dividend for the year. The company is flush with cash, debt is manageable and as business slows, receivables will be collected and converted into cash. It’s not like business is falling off a cliff or anything either. While the company lowered guidance for the second half, they’re expecting things to be only down a bit from the first half. I’m not going to tell you that I know how to value a company like this or that I have any better visibility than management as to 2h/2012 or FY 2013 earnings, but Boart is trading at a 9% yield on last year’s dividend, four times last year’s earnings and about a similar multiple on this year’s earnings seems kind of silly to me. Insiders also seem to agree with me. Four of them bought shares in the past week.

Is Boart a great long term investment? Energold is the better business, but I look at the price and cannot help but buy a few Boart, in the hope of seeing a nice bounce. I really cannot remember seeing a sector get washed out like this on very little in the way of negative news. Sure, the juniors aren’t doing much, but the producers are coining money and making up for years of underinvestment in existing assets. Overall, I do not expect to see a significant drop in worldwide drilling demand. There is a lot of drilling to do, and someone has to do it. The earnings might shrink in the short term, but long term, this is a solid businesses with long term demand and minimal risk of a serious debt issue. I’m stumped at why investors have dumped the shares like they have.

I treat this position like a trade and have bought in the past 2 days with the view of looking for a multi-week/month bounce as investors become less scared of the magnitude of the decline in drilling demand. It also helps that you get to collect a bit of a dividend if you buy immediately (record day is September 10).

I can answer much more on the idea in the questions section.