DCN (ASX) Ann: 2021 Mineral Resources and Reserve Update

Originally posted by witt: ↑

Told by someone in the industry close enough to the operation to have the claim be absolutely valid. Its probably not secret squirrel stuff at this point but I’d rather err on the side of caution.

Yes I know all of that, its common knowledge. Evidently you dont know what you dont know. If you had done your research, you may have known what has changed is actually extremely significant:

What has changed….
1. The development costs are now sunk. Being the highest contributor to any underground mining cost, this is significant.
2. Opex further reduced by removal of contract miner RUC and moving to owner-operator model of mining. Immediately there is a reduction of approx 8% of the opex (contract miners margin).
3. Complete re-design of stope shapes to target higher grade material with increased confidence due to 12 months of underground diamond drilling.

So in summary, higher grades at production-only level costs without a contract miners margin on top - we’re talking one or two long hole rigs, one or two boggers, a handful of trucks and MAYBE a service crew (likely dayshift only). No jumbos, so firing only every couple of days, utilisations will be super high because you’ll have full shifts more often than not and re-entries after firing will be kelt to a minimum. Its a very good position for a mine to be in.

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A lot of this doesnt make full sense to me. They just wrote off 91,000oz in Ore Reserves for Westralia underground , and yet supposedly have been diamond drilling the underground Resource for 12 months? That in itself requires some further elaboration from the company. By "wrote off", the page has been ripped out of the mine plan, incinerated, the ashes placed in an urn and then fired into the middle of the sun. Those ounces aren't coming back.

Presumably some of the Reserves in the existing development levels were impacted by this 91,000oz write-down as well. So in all likelihood there's fewer oz per vertical meter and subsequently less cashflow even if the margins on the remaining in-situ oz are positive. Sounds like if the capital had not already been sunk into the ug, it would never have stood up to economic scrutiny knowing what they know now.