Different investment opportunities are compared all the time...

Different investment opportunities are compared all the time using financial metrics. That is how investment decisions are made. With that in mind, Tsingshan's plants are MHP only, but the output is 120,000 tpa each. ENC's product mix provides diversity, which in theory reduces risk, but it comes at a price as there is additional capital required. The cashflow assumptions used in the IE report are commercially sensitive apparently and aren't included, so it's hard to run our own numbers. They copped out on pricing too, and went with LME pricing lol.

Anyhow, NIC has said that ENC is basically a carbon copy of HNC plus the ability to make cathode and sulfate. HNC cost $1.6b if you believe the numbers in the report. So I can't help but ask myself, does it really cost that much more due to inflation and the added ability to produce sulphate or cathode? I haven't found much on Google, but I don't have much time to spend researching at the moment. There are stories about LG Chem and BASF building cathode production facilities for between $50m and $400m. Let's assume it's costing NIC somewhere in that range to build the sulphate and cathode refinery, and add 20% for inflation. That put's it roughly between $2b and $2.4b.

So is $2.3b a good deal? I still don't really know as it will come down to product mix, margins, and how that impacts cash flow generation, compared to a straight MHP operation like HNC (or the Tsingshan projects). I had hoped for more specific information in the IE report but if it's commercially sensitive so be it. And we still don't have any data on HNC.

Regarding UT, I am probably wrong. It is a condition that NIC shareholders vote to approve the acquisition first, so they are likely waiting for that to occur before committing. And perhaps the lawyers required no further mention of UT in the presentations until shareholder approval was given. But it seems odd that there was no mention of the conditions date passing without ANY commentary.

Let me know your thoughts.