Hi
@ozblue, been busy sorry. That's an interesting question, one i will avoid answering directly other than to say less than $22 lol...
First we need to define what "worth" is? Is it the MC at a point in time along the Lassonde Curve, is it a NPV style discounted cashflow figure, is there a strategic value materially above ROI, are we talking about worth to shareholders or as an acquisition by a big fish? i know your all going to think this a cop out, but complex questions can't al3ays have simple answers...
The commodity is critical obviously (no pun intended), because Nb is not Cu and is certainly not Au. There is a reason gold projects are NPV discounted with 5% not 8 or 10%... because there is no off-take risk for gold. Gold is money, it can be sold in any quantity you make it, in any quality you make it, to anybody around the world you can get it to. We all saw the lithium guys like Altura go bust in 2019 after China walked away form off-take agreements, because industrial metals can go down in price and demand to the point there is no buyer, especially if your product has quality issues.
Next is the size and historical price volatility of the commodity being valued. A small, bespoke commodity with no central clearing house like exists for Cu, Ni etc has offtake risk and volatility risk as modest demand/supply fluctuations can cause extreme price fluctuations. Investors and the big boys like deep, liquid markets like Cu that are less likely to freeze or go no bid... even if the price does cycle. Cu is about the biggest diverse metal market going, and while Dr Copper will tell you the price cycles up and down, so long as you aren't at the back end of the cost curve there will always be good demand.
For any given Cu or Au mine then, produce as much as you can as quickly as you can for maximum economies of scale. The bean counters will then get chubby over falling unit costs and higher annual EBITDA, which regardless of the discount rate you use means a higher value project. That logic doesn;t work for small markets like Nb, there is only 125ktpa demand and so very large deposits like Araxa are limited to how quiclkly that in-ground value can be monetised. The later it is monetised (1, 2, 10 decades later) the bean counters will rightly discount that future cashflow back to today.. and it shrinks a lot more quickly in high interest rate environments than low rates.
Then you have the M&A TO valuation has shareholders all chubby. Whatever feasibility study valuation the bean counters come up with for Luni, keep in mind that whoever buys Luni off WA1 effectively has to add that TO price to the capex... WA1 holders will see a DFS with capex of say A$1.5B for arguments sake which is fine, but if BHP takes over WA1 they have to pay WA1 $1.5B plus another $1.5B to actually build it. That's now a $3B pay to play, which I can guarantee you the bean counters will be watching closely...
Bottom line before dinner, its the Lassonde Curve and where you stand on it. The 'value' might be clearly higher, a lot higher, but if the market has lost interest and the trend is not your friend then the MC keeps getting lower. I'm more about the MC than value at this stage of the game.
Cheers
. And btw, some others throw muck but I appreciate your questioning of all us Bulls logic, makes us all more informed. Cheers
(20min delay)