Hi flash yes, agree, in the light of day my comment comes across as intemperate. I couldn't work out why Mr Tom was coming across so smug given his job is at best half done, so I threw in the throwaway line about his pay packet. Anyway, point taken, thanks for pulling me up on it.
Just rewatched the Breaker presentation. So the chronology is that:
- 12 years ago the company was established to discover concealed gold systems in the WA eastern goldfields.
- 6 years ago, in 2016, they announced they had a discovery at Lake Coe.
- Since 2016 they have had 2 to 3 rigs running continuously at a cost of $60m to drill 300,000 metres.
The two takeaways TS seemed keen to impress on us is that:
- they are really focused on an "early production option", and
- when the market builds in that the early production option is to be a reality the pricing of the company should jump from $30 EV / resource ounce to at least $100 EV / resource ounce so "back the truck up".
And a couple of things that got my goat on the second hearing as much as initially were
- his repeated bald statements that "it's going to be a mine", without addressing how they intend to overcome the barriers they face, and
- his repeated statements that he prefers the "early production option" when they've already had this discovery for 6 years and when Bardoc pretty much marked the watershed for greenfield mine developments in WA.
Seeing how this was an explorers show I think TS would have been better advised to mimic what Ramelius did and focus on the geology (they of Mt Magnet, Breaker of Bombora). Or maybe follow the lead of Gascoyne in talking about how their exploration efforts might specifically help them to move forward. In contrast second time through I still found TS's talk of development of a working mine to be quite nebulous and directionless. To me, this came across as smug and patronising. And a contrast in attitude: at one point in his presentation Gascoyne's Simon Lawson commented that he felt he'd not "earned the right" to spend shareholders' money on a particular project. Not something I could see Tom Sanders ever saying.
(this is the second version of this post. I withdrew the earlier one because of too many typos).
