2023 Discussion, page-233

I read this post before it was deleted. My response below FWIW:

I'll be the first to say I'm not the smartest person. I have no delusions of grandeur.

However, saying that BDM are likely to (?) go broke by having the debt they have on their balance sheet is equally simplistic and most likely not true. A lot of large companies and mines have some form of debt. But it's not all bad. That debt in many instances allows the project to go ahead and employ people, whilst driving rev's for the company. That's not a difficult concept.

Yes taking on too much debt is a killer. But I reckon a bloke you has successfully run several companies (and still does) who now have a collective capitalisation in the billions of $ I think would more than likely understand this.

Yes I agree it's never good to do the worship thing and simply trust for the sake of it. But given the relatively low purchase price for the asset that is currently producing annual EBITDA of more than the total debt on their balance sheet suggests they are covered well enough if things went awry. Hence I'm willing (and others too it seems, as well as multi billion $ funds around the world) to think they know how to run the business and at least make a bloody good attempt at increasing the resource for years to come.

We could all be wrong, you are correct. That's life and if it collapses then we'll deal with that and have egg on our face.

But to say there is no intelligent analysis is not correct. As for value adding, that's what they're trying to do... Hence them buying it. If they can increase the resource and have another 10 years or more of mine life (not guaranteed by any stretch) then they will be in an incredible position to create more wealth for share holders and employees.

As for GIB, I have nothing against them, never have. I personally wish BDM kept Ellendale, but they didn't for some reason and I wish GIB all the best with it. Who knows I might even buy GIB if they can show some movement toward some production.