Yes, you are right about option value of copper, even though...

Yes, you are right about option value of copper, even though imho people vastly underestimate how much copper ended up in Chinese real estate that is not going to rebound anytime soon if ever, and also that copper price increases will be driven by cost increases so that it does not need to reflect in better profability/cash flow.

You are also right that in the right hands there may be a better business case when it comes to production profile.

You miss though that A$90m cash flow is excluding interest (if CLA would need to fund US$253m/ AU$ 400m of capex, I doubt that would come in under 20% interest given country and project risk), and excluding SG&A. And more importantly they can only foreign own 40% of the operations, not 100%. That kind of limitations typically don't come cheap.

So I do think you very much overestimate cash flow to the current CLA shareholder, actually if they only retain 40% of the jv, I would expect much of the CLA cashflow to be eaten up by management. That is one of the reasons why I doubt CLA will ever develop MCB to the benefit of the CLA shareholders, imho CLA shareholders will only profit through sale of the whole project. Unless they put their spouse on the board, or are otherwise on the inside, of course. I very much doubt jv'ing the project will prove the best investment case for shareholders, but maybe it may provide a good exit point surfing on retailers exitement. Just out of interest, what is your pool of 'right partner', because I struggled to understand how any foreign (non Pino) company could make this work.

Sagay was not included in the bid, I believe, so that is irrelevant to the SVM bid. Don't think it has a lot of potential either, by the way. It is a sideshow at best, imho.