Great summary! Now let’s consider that conflict in the Middle East & Europe means a bunch of nickel is being used while an end/meaningful de-escalation to either will create construction based demand that wasn’t part of recent projections.
I’m sure all here would like to see the rebuilding phase arrive sooner than later.
Then we have ongoing jitters regarding Taiwan.
That creates demand for military expansion- a good chunk of that is naval based in Korea and Japan etc to counter the build up of the Chinese navy ( even if it is often with a coast guard badge on the ships ). Very steel etc intensive.
Based on commodity pricing we must consider that the bottom of the cycle has been reached in the last quarter of last year. Retail and lower level institutional investment is just starting to recover from full blown capitulation.
That will take a good 6 mths or more to translate in to those two groups being ready to start investing again.
Only the true contrarians are investing now. Those that generally make the most money from the never ending cycle.
Evidence? No low-mid level investment funds have arrived yet. Only the big mining/procurement/trading houses like Sumitomo and Mitsubishi.
BHP? In some areas of their business they are a victim of their own success as they are too bloated to be agile.
They appear to be more interested in protecting overall mining market share ( the biggest has to try to stay the biggest! ).
Let’s note the OS ( Optimised Study ), was scheduled to end in Q1. We might look forward to that news & consider that Sumitomo/Mitsubishi may have seen the raw data. Their committing to the DFS etc tells me they weren’t worried by what they saw, quite possible they were encouraged by it.
The potential for extra credits/AISC cuts from that OS might wake some people up.
We can bump the rest of the schedule forward by a quarter and if we do that should get a fair idea of the roadmap from here.
Last but not least our CEO is doing a radio interview today with a station that a lot of older people here in Australia listen to. Retirees with money to invest will be among those listeners. It’s a smart place to do an interview.
(20min delay)