General discussion, page-8554

"For us to be equivalent, assuming around 2Mt of niobium, by that stage our Mcap should be around $25B at the same stage in a couple of years time" - am I reading correctly that you are proposing WA1 should be valued at nearly 20% of your estimated in situ value (A$25b market cap; 2MT * A$67k per tonne ~ A$135B)?

As a reference point, our best estimate of Araxa's valuation is approximately 5% of in situ value; ~A$800B in situ value (~11MT Nb) and ~A$40B market cap ($13B USD from the 2011 JP+SK/CN consortia in today's AUD, pro-rated by 4/3 to account for Codemig's 25% profit share). Of course, this ties out with the earnings-based value estimate P/E ~ 22 I found from the CBMM 2021 sustainability report, as E ~ 0.006 * 0.4 * in situ value, where .006 is the approximate fraction of the resource they extract each year (say, 65kT out of 11MT), and 0.4 is an approximate net margin.

Perhaps WA1's enterprise value will eventually reach a slight premium in units of in situ value to Araxa if/when it is fully established and operating in steady state, given that the NPV scales sublinearly in tonnage, as marginal tonnes get extracted farther into the future, and the premium for the jurisdiction. Hopefully the resource estimate will be greater at that point too. However, we'll still be discounting a couple of years in suitably-risked time, and subtracting capex to reach a market cap. You say in a couple of years, so let's assume that the project is derisked with respect to the major outstanding items at that point. Given the above, I would say 5% in situ value on 3MT Nb, less ~$1B in capex, discounted three years at 1.14^3 (i.e. beta of ~2), giving ~$6B market cap would be a wonderful outcome for a couple of years time, obviously contingent upon the short term risk items, particularly metallurgy and processing, the eventual resource estimate, as well as the various other development goals, hitting the target.