Ann: Agreements for producing Ni assets and US$471M capital raise, page-25

My thoughts after having a decent read through:

- ONI would be expected to perform similarly to ANI, which looks to be making EBITDA of around US$50m per quarter. So in essence, NIC is paying US$75m for 10% of an income stream currently valued at around US$200m EBITDA p/a. Seems like a reasonable price. The idea of building a dedicated converter for ONI looks like a great idea if they can secure long term offtake of nickel matte.

- For the 10% of HNC HPAL they will effectively issue A$386m worth of new shares in NIC, so as existing shareholders we are being diversified away from NPI and matte, and into MHP. They are talking about margins of US$10k plus at the moment for the MHP, so that would be attributable EBITDA of around US$66m p/a for giving up a share of the income from HNI, RNI, ANI, ONI and the Hengjaya mine. Has anyone crunched numbers on this yet to see if it's a good deal for existing NIC shareholders?

- The "DAWN HPAL+" project looks interesting. I am not really across the chemistry, but it seems to go beyond MHP to sulphate and electrolytic nickel. This will be another game changer for NIC in terms of EBITDA growth, and will set the company up nicely for the future. Probably need to see the independent expert report and listen to the analyst questions at the webcast to understand the economics of this project at bit more, but if they go ahead with it, I would expect another large CR and bond issue to fund the project.

- I was hoping we would see news of a BOO power plant for RNI and HNI. The economics for RNI in particular must be lagging well behind the other projects now (with the exception of ONI until it ramps up of course).

- I had assumed that Siduarsi would be the next step for NIC, but these opportunities look fantastic. I think Tsingshan will eventually build an entirely separate industrial park near Siduarsi as they did with Weda Bay (IWIP) and are currently doing at Merdeka's SCM mine (IKIP).

Let me know your thoughts!