jd,I think you may have confused months with quarters. They are...

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18/01/24

16:24

Post #: 71947949
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Originally posted by jdpc35: ↑

Unfortunately not much joy in this update.

Production @ 12,599 for December is still only about a quarter of supposed nameplate HMC at full production - so hence the very high C1 costs of A$835/t (also exacerbated by the ongoing commissioning and other "temporary" expenses). It is not clear as to how much of the C1 cost figure relates to steady state vs commissioning.
Sale price achieved was terrible. Some time ago, we were speculating that they could achieve A$1,000/t. Even though we have depressed global HMC prices at the moment, the achieved US$433/t (so about A$655/t) suggests STA is being hit with significant quality discounts.
At the moment, STA is losing about $180/t of HMC produced (A$655/t revenue & $A$835/t costs.
Production costs will obviously drop significantly if they can get anywhere near to nameplate - but this is still a very long way away judging from this update.
The lenders will be looking at this December result and wondering if they have a credible pathway to achieving profitable operations. Their capacity to survive this depends on a credible, milestone focused, pathway from here which both delivers cost savings (no more commissioning & temporary costs) and month to month uplift in HMC volumes.
If they can achieve, say, a +10% per month, every month, uplift in HMC production, this looks like 13.8kt for Jan; 15.2kt for Feb - through to 22.2kt by June which is still less than 50% of nameplate. Even at 10% per month improvement, they would not hit nameplate volumes until April 2025.
The above comment is just showing for illustrative purposes the sort of cumulative performance targets they need to be setting and achieving. Bottom line - they achieved a 19% improvement in December over November. I think they really need to be delivering mid-teen % production volume uplifts every month from here on in to have a shot at refinancing this by end Q1-2024.

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jd,

I think you may have confused months with quarters. They are closer to 70% of nameplate, and solid improvement month on month is finally happening.

Also, they flagged back in November that the December shipment would be at a discounted price, as it involved lower quality product, prior to recent quality improvements.
STA Price at posting: 9.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
13 Upvote

3 Great analysis

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