Cheers Triage, a shame that Ramelius has not made the presentation available online yet (it may not at all, as I note they did provide the market with the Diggers presentation in August last year).
This part is undoubtedly very interesting, as with Rebecca/Roe pushed back 6 months (not that they have stated it's been pushed back, but.... it has). Back in March,
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).
I am unsurprised that Zep was so clear about what a gold company should be doing right now..... making money! He's quite rightly talking up RMS powerful cash generation right now (whilst behind his back, he just spent $180m buying 18% of spartan....) and not doing what WGX is doing, which is investing heavily on it's internal growth assets, yet, at the same time, RMS clearly made a bid on WGX! (they must be doing something right! ha).
It's a pretty tricky position for MZ to be presenting the strengths of RMS, yet at the same, sort of admitting, that their near mid term growth prospects are.... non-existent. Maybe MZ was a tight rope walker in another life.
Then you have this: My impression, is that.... RMS is arguing that they want to go ahead with an enlarged Eridanus pit, whilst also processing marginal ounces...? i.e. low grade stockpiles that would otherwise be used at the end of the mine plan. This to me.... is saying, they want to process a heck of a lot more tonnes... yet, how can they do this when the plant is already running flat out at just over 1.85mtpa..... So... they need a lot more processing throughput, like... maybe 1-1.5mtpa more (just up the road...)
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.As for your last comment on Enda May Stage 3, I take an almost opposite view (there may be a way to eek out another 3-6 months at Edna May by scratching around the current pit... and U/G) whilst, making every $$ they can now, but not going ahead with Stage 3 (because real profits from Stage 3 Edna, would be almost 2 years away.... that does not seem to fit with "making maximum cashflow now"..?
@Just4kicks - honestly, I just would have thought if RMS was going to have bought Carasue dam, they would have done it already, unless... they want to finish all their studies at Rebecca/Roe and.... finish a major acquisition in Spartan, which would IMHO increase their market cap by at least $1 billion. A $3b market cap company is able to leverage debt/script/cash better, as maybe NST are not willing to sell for peanuts.
In the end, RMS are playing their cards very tight to their chest with Reb/Roe.... all guesswork for me
@plough - pretty sure the numbers were run, a while ago regarding Cue ore.....
(20min delay)