Ann: Commercial Production Declared at Balama, page-46

Thanks @ugley, for the invitation.  I’m currently in Whistler, where the snow is great, and the town is throbbing.  Good, but for one small problem.  I had a fall this morning which resulted in:
1.  A badly bruised bum
2.  Ruptured Achilles’ tendon - less pauinful, but more of a problem, long-term
Ah well.  The enforced inactivity gives a little more time for HC.

The Commercial Production declaration focused on volumes and quality, which are looking quite promising.
Now we have the Quarterly, with some costs and prices, but hedged around with enough disclaimers to make it hard to generate good projections. I did not hear the presentation and subsequent questions,(clashed with skiing time, and guess which got priority), so I may have missed some clarification.

It’s hard not to be concerned about vague statements that production and pricing are ‘trending’ in the right direction.  How fast?   What is the relationship between unit costs and production rate?  ‘Vanadium warrants further study’.  Very cautious, and ill-defined.  Makes even an optimist(like me) feel nervous.
Is the ‘trend’ (whatever that means) due to increased production volumes, or improved plant efficiencies, or what?  

If pricing is ‘trending upwards’, we would expect buyers to be trying to lock in prices now.  Is that happening?  We don’t have any indication.

But there are a few healthy signs.

Peak production at an annualised rate of 2.0 million tonnes of ore has been achieved.  Recovery rates have recently averaged 70%,  but have reached 90%.  If those rates were to become the norm, we would see production of just over 300k tonnes, at a unit cost around $400 per tonne.

BAM and Vanadium?  Hopeful, but hard to quantify at this stage.

All this boils down to a reasonable chance of producing, in 2019, better than 250k tonnes, at about $400 per tonne - without doing anything more than maintaining the performance achieved in late December.  Logically, the Operations Manager would be expected to do just that.

If he does, and if prices increase even very modestly, we would see profits of $30m+ in 2019

Thus, the timetable is set back somewhat (but not much).  Becoming cash-flow positive in 2Q2019 (which is far from out of the question) would make the current SP  plunge look a big overreaction.             

Cheers