Seeking Alpha: Alacer Gold Looks Like A Low-Cost Miner That Nobody Wants To Love

The history of Alacer Gold (OTCPK:ALIAF) (ASR.TO) hasn't been a conventional one. Once a junior gold company focused solely on Turkey and known as Anatolia Minerals, Alacer came out of a merger of Anatolia and Avoca Resources in 2011 that added assets in Australia. Recently the company sold its Australian assets and has essentially become Anatolia all over again - a company with a very low-cost producing gold mine in Turkey, but one with very limited conventional production life left.

Alacer does have some worthwhile exploration assets in Turkey (which it owns through a 50/50 joint venture), as well as follow-on expansion potential at the core Copler mine. The real key, though, is moving forward with a plan to process sulfides - a move that would unlock more than 60% of the company's measured and indicated resources. With declining gold prices making investors and analysts exceptionally nervous in general, and an uncertain path forward with the sulfide process making them specifically nervous about Alacer, there could be some real value here.

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Alacer Gold Looks Like A Low-Cost Miner That Nobody Wants To Love

Investopedia: 2011 - A Look Back At Gold Stocks

This past year was a curious one for the gold sector. While a lot of attention seemed to go toward the daily ups and downs of gold prices, the incessant wrangling over debt and budgets in much of the developed world, and the ongoing sovereign debt crisis in Europe, there were some interesting developments below the surface. Although the price of gold and the performance of gold miner stocks have never been in one-to-one lockstep, perhaps 2011 marks the beginning of an even greater independence in these trading patterns. (For more, see 5 Best Bets For Buying Gold.)

For Gold Itself, Not a Bad Year  
At the most basic level, gold had another strong year. While the year is not yet complete and the final tallies of the major market indexes are not yet written, it is all but inconceivable that 2011 will close without a fairly sizable performance gap in the favor of gold. As of this writing, the S&P 500 is basically flat for the year, while the SPDR Gold Shares (ARCA:GLD) is up better than 20%.

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Investopedia: Can Smaller Miners Become Big Winners In The Gold Rush?

Gold is still the hot trade. While it's not that hard to remember when gold was an afterthought, squeezed between a quick summary of bonds and commodities during financial programming, it is now a leading investment class. Whether an investor's interest in gold is fueled by fears of inflation, economic and political turbulence, technicals, or even just a "greater fool" theory, the reality is that it has been a winning trade.

By now any investor with even a passing interest in gold knows a little something about the myriad of choices for investment. People can choose to own actual bullion or numismatic gold, resource mutual funds, specialized ETFs like SPDR Gold Shares (NYSE:GLD), or mining stocks ... and those are just the most popular options. (For more, see What To Do About Gold Now.)

Given that mining companies are the only entry on the list that can actually grow from internal strategic decisions, they are worth a serious look. Here, we'll consider some of the smaller miners, which can offer substantially more bang for the buck than major miners like Barrick (NYSE:ABX) and Newmont Mining (NYSE:NEM).

A Quick View From Above 

What is interesting about mining companies is that they don't necessarily track gold prices, and that is particularly true for smaller miners. For small miners, performance is often significantly influenced by the company's efforts to bring mines into operation and increase gold production. Investors should also note that many (if not most) analysts expect gold prices to peak in the next year or two and then decline - that does not preclude successful investments in small miners and those analysts could certainly be wrong, but it is a detail to consider all the same. 

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