If you were to float the HPMSM project as a separate USA listed...

If you were to float the HPMSM project as a separate USA listed company with offtake customers of Stellantis ($41b MC) and General Motors ($54b MC) with it having a US government grant of US$166m and its projected annual EBITDA including phase 2 of US$178m/yr, there is no way you would come up with a valuation of just over US$50m but that is the current MC of E25 inclusive of this, Butcherbird and Lake Johnston tenements. The market still has doubts, that is clear. Whether they are doubts about JB, the project, whether the US grant will be received or something else is unclear.

E25 have run some large losses. To June 2022 was $17.1m if you exclude the $1.0m of expensed exploration and pre-feasibility work. To June 2023 the deficit was $18.2m if you exclude the expensed $6.6m of exploration and pre-feasibility work that primary related to HPMSM. The half year to Dec2023 was a deficit of $13.6m excluding $0.2m of expensed exploration and pre-feasibility expenditures. These are significant losses but are more circa $50m than "towards $100m". Periods before Jul21-Jun22 were before Butcherbird generated revenue. Periods after Dec2023 are when Butcherbird was in C&M (and are yet to be published).



100% agree E25 noted it was a simple dig and beneficiation model. I think it is still is, but E25 didn't do enough pre-FID test work around clay issues. I suspect that the optical ore sorter does work acceptably with perfectly cleaned manganese ore. The ore that went through the test work would have been perfectly cleaned of clay and that was a mistake. E25 made a mistake around the extent of problems clay would cause and arguably took too long trying to find solutions that didn't exist using existing equipment. The Butcherbird upgrade equipment selections would appear to resolve the clay issues.

From understanding how a DMS plant works and then seeing the test results obtained, it is the right piece of equipment for optimal beneficiation, even if more expensive than the optical ore scanner. While the words DMS are not used below, from the description its clear that it is a DMS plant that GEMCO use as part of their beneficiation process. IMO JB is making the correct choice to suggest DMS as the beneficiation option for Butcherbird. GEMCO has realised that DMS operations work best with size fractions that are close to each other hence using 2 DMS's based on size. I'm not sure if E25 has realised this point yet.