Thanks Joel, and thanks for posting that well reasoned...

Thanks Joel, and thanks for posting that well reasoned proposition.

A quibble I have with Ramelius buying Mungari from Evolution is that as an asset transaction rather than a corporate transaction the seller will most likely be looking for cash rather than scrip as payment. At a sale price of say $850m Ramelius has about $400m in cash (and buckets more coming in this quarter) so let's say they use all of that $400m as down payment to Evolution. Ramelius could perhaps debt raise a couple of hundred million more. So would Evolution be willing to barter for the remaining quarter of a billion or so, maybe in scrip now or IOU's into the future?

I think a corporate deal may be more doable, with the target company's shareholders likely to be more amenable to exchanging much of their holdings for RMS scrip, with maybe some cash on top to sweeten the deal.

Of course, Ramelius acquired Edna May from Evolution, here, so the two sides know each other and maybe Jake Klein is willing to once again get funky so they can close the deal.

I see Evolution is in the process of increasing the mill capacity at Mungari from 2mtpa to 4.2mtpa and that it is located 20 km west of Kalgoorlie. Noting that Ramelius's two red headed step-children (AKA Rebecca and Roe) are both within 150 km of Kalgoorlie (to the west) are you thinking that R&R ore could be hauled to Mungari for processing? It's a while since I bothered reading up on R&R but would their modest grades warrant the effort? If that is not a possibility then if Simon Lawson worries about keeping a 2.5mtpa mill at Dalgaranga fully occupied I'd want plenty of proof that whoever ends up owning Mungari could keep that 4.2mtpa mill consistently busy.

Oh, also, Mark Zeptner. BEng (Hons) Mining, MAusIMM, MAICD: the Zep is not an uneducated man.