Just a word of warning to any green newbs that the post above is mostly pure fantasy, as usual. Think along the lines of Fantasy Football and you'll be fine.
Firstly, Victor and the Board disclosed the negative cashflows in the most recent quarterly. $5M per MONTH, net cash burn. It was there for the world to see. The cash bridge graphic contained therein told the story very succinctly.
Secondly, there was the not-so-nice little rider -- also contained in the last quarterly -- that come the new cal year, Trafi was going to sweep any surplus funds above a $20M cash balance from PAN's coffers, to accelerate debt retirement. When I read this I immediate labelled it 'The Zombie Rider' because it was going to hobble PAN moving forward. Although not specifically reported in the press, I do wonder whether this new offtaker/lender-imposed rider acted to hasten the Board's strategic review before the new year.
For me, the first point only told the story of the (then) present operational difficulties. In and of itself it could not foretell the future. It did, however, provide very valuable insight into just how potentially precarious the near/mid-term cash runway was going to be if something didn't improve quickly (yes, ops could improve, but my comment is more a reference to revenues (Ni prices)). The second point spoke to the impending hobbling that PAN was going to endure from early this year, for the foreseeable future. Combine just those two disclosed elements in a Ni price environment that was likely to remain depressed, or even deteriorate, during 2024 and you've got everything you need to know from a risk perspective.
As far as the IGO white knight theory goes: It's a cool story (brah), but no. There are numerous other possible scenarios, not just one. I do agree with the idea that IF (big if) any local Ni player were to successfully bid for the Savannah assets it would quite possibly be IGO. Context is everything, however, and given their own-goal in overpaying for WSA and the fallout surrounding the the subsequent write-down, there's not a snowflake's chance in hell they'll bid anywhere near $100M for Savannah. IF they bid, it would need to be at a sufficiently compelling bargain-basement price that twitchy IGO holders could stomach. My thinking is possibly, maybe, hopefully (you get the idea) bidding only enough that, when combined with PAN's residual cash at bank, it makes Trafi whole. More realistically, I think that's wishful thinking and that Trafi would most likely need to be prepared to take some kind of haircut for any trade sale to work. The alternative is that Trafi ends up with Savannah and it figures out what to do with it in due course.
In any case, none of the above is going to help existing SHs who are unlikely to see much, if any, return. Sadly.
PS. Forget any nonsense about what IGO was prepared to pay in the past. It (the past) is a different planet. What matters now is the environment that IGO (and the broader WA Ni space) finds itself in now.
1) The sunk cost fallacy is... a fallacy. 2) Current context matters.
PPS. SHs who expect a running commentary by the Board of operational difficulties need a reality-check. That's not how our corporate system works.
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