patience or foolish!, page-42

Leeman
'
"Minerals are minerals, pretty basic stuff."
If you dont believe me I will trade your 24 carat gold with my 9 carat gold.
but specifically....These rare earths are for specialised purposes.
For example...There is big differences with 99.5%, 99.7% and 99.9% percent qualities of neodymium.'

I take your point 100%, but gold is still gold. It has a market value at any given purity, as do RE. The COP to get to 99.9 is probably significantly more than 99.5, and one assumes customers will pay the premium.

With gold it is used downstream for the added value, and often that is where the big profits are made.

Gold miners are very much impacted by the world price of gold - of course, and their COP. As are RE miners. The world if full of gold, it just not commercial to dig it out at less than 1gm per ton. It maybe one day, but most shareholders don't want to wait for years on the gamble that gold will go to $3k an ounce.

COP is relatively fixed cost once production is up and running, so the price achieved is the big variable that will impact profit. in the near term.

And it was profit that was missing from the list. IF LYC can get anywhere near $37 and sell over 80% of expected full capacity then the profits will flow in 2013/4 year, for sure.

If the price they can get is nearer $25 then the business may be more marginal until they can get the COP down by refining their processes.

The point of my note that minerals are minerals is that COP, price achieved, and volume is really what its all about.

But I'm sure you are fully aware of the basic economics of mining companies.