Mr. Cooke: I am the founder, Chairman and CEO of Endeavour Silver Corp. In 2003 myself and my associate, Godfrey Walton, decided that we wanted to get into the silver business, so we went to Mexico looking to buy and develop strategic silver assets. At that time, we had a $0.10 stock, only $300,000 in working capital, and there was just the two of us. Six years later, we have one of the fastest-growing silver mining companies in North America, with revenues last year exceeding $50 million. The two operating silver mines in Mexico produced 2.6 million ounces of silver last year, 3.4 million ounces of silver equivalents. And with over 800 employees, we've grown the company by leaps and bounds during its first six years.
TWST: What is your perspective on the silver market's performance over the past six months or so? Where do you think it may be going in the next six to 12 months?
Mr. Cooke: I think gold and silver are very interesting. For instance, silver is known as the poor man's gold for a very good reason. In these cyclic markets, gold almost always leads the way and silver follows, typically lags behind gold and then overshoots it. If you go look at the gold and silver trends over the last five years, you will see that twice in the last five years there have been completely unexpected 50% moves in the bullion prices of gold and silver that typically start in September and culminate in April. I believe in September of this past year, we entered into a third completely unexpected 50% move that culminated in April of this year with our own in-house targets of around U.S.$1,500 gold and U.S.$25 silver. If these precious metals continue to follow the previous patterns, then those near-term peaks will be followed by an extended consolidation period, and then there will be a wave up on the precious metals.
I should also point out that from a fundamental point of view, the reason why these metals are precious and the reason why they are growing in price can be looked at in a different way. It's actually the value of the U.S. dollar that is falling, and it's falling in waves. And that's reflected in the wave movement of the gold and silver prices.
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