I spent a bit of time looking through the reports and listening...

I spent a bit of time looking through the reports and listening to the conference call. A few things,

1. I thought highly of the CEO as he was able to answer all the technical questions on issues in one the mines, I like CEOs to have this level of detail.
2. I thought the new strategy was good (nothing unexpected, but still good to hear it).
3. Dividend and buyback change makes sense, they issued alot of new shares to buy NCM and you could not support such a big dividend per share, they are rebaselined at $1 and will use all extra cash to buy back shares to get the share count closer to where it was. This makes sense to me.
4. I like the tracking of the $500M cost synergies, in the powerpoint, it goes to accountability, most companies don't track that.

I'm not sure it deserved a 7-8% drop today, we were already trending down. The take over hasn't been great for NCM shareholders or NEM shareholders for that matter and looks like we need at least another 18 months of good execution on the strategy to start to reap the benefits. Having said that the sensitivity tables show an extra $550m per $100 increase in the share price, so even moving to $2200 oz will completely change the prospects for the company.