It's the assumptions I've made which lend themselves to the extreme side of conservatism as my knowledge of lithium DSO operations is poor. I know there is a crushing and a screening component which should at least partially remove some of the quartz, feldspars, micas and other minerals however I don't know to what extent the ore is screened and I don't believe CXO have put any details out on this process. So I'm running off no knowledge of the process and a very conservative assumption of contained spodumene ore only based off [tonnage * grade]. This significantly understates a DSO operation but it should highlight that there is potential for WIN to earn multiples of their current market cap in revenue from a DSO operation. In reality, that number could be significantly higher but I like to aim for conservative. Then it comes down to what value is placed on the nickel assets.
RDT will be a good comparison as they're about 6-12 months in front of WIN currently and have a 12.7Mt @ 1.2% deposit and sit on a granted mining lease. RDT believe they have 6 months of permitting in front of them before they can develop a mining plan. They also want to produce 30,000-40,000t of DSO per month but they also want to do some beneficiation to remove the quartz which again I have no details on how this would be achieved or what the resulting price per tonne would be.
But if they want to build some level of infrastructure for beneficiation, then that is how WIN might beat RDT to DSO production if WIN choose to go for a straight shovels-to-boat approach. Looking at this slide from the presentation, if they believe they can get a lot of this done before year's end then in theory they could be moving dirt within 2023.
If WIN can prove up a similar grade but smaller deposit of 4-5Mt @ 1.2%, and simply crush it and dump on a ship down in Esperance for $1200/dmt then assuming they can do between 30,000-40,000t similarly to RDT, what's $36-48M revenue per month? If they can maintain 100% of the project and claim a 70% profit margin after costs, and return 30% of NPAT to shareholders, thats 36-48c per share annually based off current shares on issue, but let's assume theres a 20% dilutionary event to raise capital for mining and crushing plant, that still comes in at 25-33c annual dividend. The numbers just become silly at this point and its beyond my knowledge so I would rather wait for a DSO scoping study or something of a more official nature from RDT, WIN or another to plug the numbers.
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