watso has this stock from the old lumacom days - anyway, that is...

watso has this stock from the old lumacom days - anyway, that is another story.

mention has been made about costs. shareholders will not find out the real position, till the half yearly comes out, in the new year.

each mine is different etc etc - and watso just tosses the following into the ring - and watso might be totally wrong

sbm, give a pretty good breakdown, of their costs, for their underground mines. a recently opened mine is called the "king of the hills"

all things being equal, mining (and processing costs), are directly related to grade (ie - double the grade, then costs are halved - on a per oz basis) .

after allowing for grade difference, then an extra 30% could be added for costs. the processing costs for sbm, are their own costs (they own the mill) - so it could be, that custom milling, will be double the cost - after all, the owner of the mill has to make money. watso has not checked it out - but nav, sent ore to the sbm mill for treatment - so maybe there is some indication of what custom milling costs.

the "king of the hills mine" is putting through larger volumes (ie economies of scale) - and are using a different mining method than kmc (kmc, from memory, were using air leg mining - which was higher cost per ton - but higher grade.

watso could crunch the numbers a bit more - but it is all a bit iffy - suffice to say, that it could be, that kmc, are not really making all that much money from present operations