Ann: Noosa Mining Conference - Company Presentation, page-13

There's that word again: "imminent". Simon Lawson of Spartan used it the other day in saying they will be releasing a batch of mineral resource estimates any time now. It's a great piece of string word that could mean within days or within weeks or in the next month or so. Mark Zeptner made no particular comment about Spartan other than the investment has done well since the end of June (and that Ramelius also has a major announcement to release imminently).

The main impression MZ made on me from his presentation today was from his opening comments that gold companies have an "obligation" in these times to generate the maximum amount of free cash they can. Sure, it's a point of differentiation from peer companies, particularly Westgold that produced something less than $100m cash for the year compared to Ramelius that using the Zep's logic produced close to half a billion dollars of cash flow. (As an random aside, for some reason the boss of Westgold reminds me of Alf Garnet's son-in-law).

But in addition, I took his comments to mean that Ramelius is "obliged" to take advantage of the record gold prices and steadying costs to extract even marginal dollars now, while the going is good. MZ made a point that processing of Mt Magnet ore from Eridanus will produce the sugar hit now more so than at the back end of the proposed mining plan. I did not pick up MZ saying that Rebecca and Roe is being delayed but if he did that also fits with his focus of focusing on cashing in now (any cash flow from those projects are probably three years away). I could also stretch extrapolate that MZ is motivated to cash in as much as he can on Edna May. Sure, even now stage 3 might be marginal but there might never be a better opportunity to squeeze some cash flow out of that ore body. Of course the risk is the gold price tanks in the meantime. Anyway, one way or another we will all know imminently.