Hello and welcome to Company Focus. My name is Aamer Nawid, analyst at Fat Prophets and today I'm going to be taking a look at two junior gold miners, two emerging producers who've been making waves in their own right, companies which are capable one day of becoming big hitters in the gold-mining world.

Regular viewers will be aware that I'm a big fan of established players in the gold-mining space but we're always looking to see which emerging producer will join those ranks at some point in the future. There's lots of candidates.

Today I'm looking at two of them - Medusa Mining and Avocet Mining.

Medusa is actually in the throes of moving from the AIM market to the official list and investors' enthusiasm has ticked up quite significantly of late as you can see. Over the last 12 months, Medusa here is in gold, share prices rocketed by over 200 per cent. It's put on 25 per cent so far this year. Broader market in black and Avocet there in blue.

So far for this year for Medusa production has been good, 25,000 ounces in the first quarter and the company's on track to produce 90,000 ounces for the current fiscal year which ends in June. So solid production performance.

What's it got in the ground? Thanks to recent upbeat developments at the Bananghilig project deposit total inferred resources have gone up to 1.3m ounces and total indicated resources have increased to 580,000. So good numbers there as well. Inferred resources are not as strong as indicated.

In terms of Medusa's main attribute I suppose you've got to look at total cash costs. These are extremely low. The company has a pre-stated aim of becoming a mid-tier producer, producing 300,000 to 400,000 ounces at $200 per ounce. Now, during the first quarter it produced 25,000 ounces but at $180 per ounce and the reason it was able to do so was because of the fact that the ore process was of high grade, 20g per tonne is a significant high grade across the industry.

In addition it's crucial to notice that its production is unhedged. And in the first quarter the gold it actually produced it actually retained, it didn't actually sell. So it kind of speaks volumes about its financial position.

They've also made significant copper discoveries which if they want to commercialise and produce, the move to the official list will help capital-raising to fund that.

The second company I'm going to be looking at is Avocet Mining. As you can see from the chart, the share price has gone from strength to strength, maybe not as emphatically as Medusa's but nonetheless good performance in its own right.

With regard to current production, Avocet has the edge. 45,000 ounces it produced in the first three months of this year. Resources and reserves, it also has the edge over Medusa. The group's star attraction is the Inata mine and that on its own has a resource base of 1.7m ounces.

But focusing back on total cash costs and Medusa creeps back in. It cost Avocet $735 per ounce to pull gold out of the ground during the first three months of this year. The reason was the lower grade of ore - 2g per tonne is a lot less than 20g per tonne which Medusa can boast.

So both companies have similar objectives, they both want to become mid-tier producers, they both have similar sort of output goals but they're completely different in terms of their attributes.

In terms of resources and reserves, Avocet, in terms of current production, Avocet, in terms of the hedging situation Medusa has the edge, Avocet has 400,000 ounces hedged at $970 per ounce. Not great if you think that gold is going to go up to $1,500 per ounce.

Medusa also has these copper deposits but then again looking at the valuation of the shares it's a little bit more pricey than Avocet.

In terms of the future, a lot depends on whether Medusa's graduation to the official list is already priced in and which of these companies produces the biggest sort of upward revisions in resources and reserves. And those will be critical factors in determining share price performance.

Both have the ability and the potential to become big hitters in their own right.

Thanks for watching. Make sure you tune in again next week.