I'm fairly ambivalent about this announcement, diversifying the...

I'm fairly ambivalent about this announcement, diversifying the source of funding sounds reasonable enough, and it's only $40m out of the total debt of (I think?) $127m at present. And I guess DD will always need some debt if only for working capital purposes.

But it's not necessarily cheaper than current funding. It's hard to work out from the accounts, but year end debt of $127m, and interest funding costs of about $4m for the half implies an average interest rate on current facilities at 6.5%. So as Mr plough points out, the new funding at nearer 7% will be slightly more expensive. But 0.5% of $40m is only $200k so it's pretty immaterial.