Good find smartdude.
Getting the MRE a few days before the Noosa Conference fits in well with the Pathway To Production timeline,
This reinforces again that Rox is very serious about its delivery timeline.
What a momentous difference that has made to Rox. I can recall a previous MD boasting that he delivered the Scoping Study only a few months late.
Unlike previous leaders, Phill Wilding will not be claiming mouthwatering projected cash flows because the MRE is a global resource, not a mineable one.
That’s the Reserve, and it comes with the DFS due later this year.
However, the Step Up Campaign has focused on drilling for gold to add to the Reserve, such as inferred stopes and gold shoot extensions close to existing underground infrastructure, resulting in low-cost mining.
Around 80% of the increase in the UG MRE will add to the Reserve, perhaps more?
In the PFS, the High-Grade Maiden Probable Ore Reserve estimate was 3.8Mt @ 4.4 g/t Au for 546koz.
Say Rox adds 300,000 more gold ozs to the UG MRE, that will bring the Reserve up to 786,000 oz, an outstanding result.
Remember that the upcoming MRE doesn’t capture recent drilling results and none from Currans.
Probably unrealistic, but a 1m oz gold Reserve in the DFS would set the share price on fire
The other indicator to watch for in the MRE is the grade.
Lifting the grade will dramatically increase production and free cash flow.
To some extent, Rox has a choice between lifting the grade or increasing the ozs in the Reserve.
I suspect that Rox will not initially lower the grade to increase the Reserve because they want to be very profitable from year 1 of the LOM.
If anything, Rox will increase the grade to 4.5 or even 5 g/t.
That’s going to boost early profitability and shorten the payback period for the Capex finance.
A project with a quick payback is much more attractive to funding bodies.
The third factor that will lift the DFS metrics is the price of gold, which can be assumed, now around $1,500 an ounce higher than the gold price assumption in the PFS.
The POG is the single most important driver of free cash flow, and we will see that reflected in the DFS metrics.
After the MRE, we can look forward to the Mine Plan Update that will give us the first insight into the Capex costs for the project.
I’m expecting a clever mine plan from mining engineer CEO and MD Phill Wilding that will help to deliver a low Capex outcome with an AISC margin of around $2,500 oz of gold.
Do the maths on 1m ozs over 10 years.
Rox is hugely undervalued.
(20min delay)