Just did a bit of reading - acquisition ann, drilling anns, SRK PFS, Snowdens resource report. Went down a rabbit hole of trying to update the PFS financials to 2021 prices. Short version is that the NPV is vastly improved, probably near 400M AUD post tax. However, this is for an open pit. Given that the very local community of Kremnica is against open pit mining, and that a lot of the previous studies used cyanide, now banned by Slovakia, most of that investment into metallurgical and feasibility research by previous companies IMO is going to be scrapped. Sturec needs to be an underground mine and MTC has its work cut out to redefine the resource in those terms - this was mentioned in an email from a director in another thread: new resource then scoping study after low hanging fruit of extensional drilling. Fortunately the state owned corp cut all those exploration adits (although only Andrej is serviceable currently, hence the concentration of drilling on the one pad) and most of the central mineralisation is already understood so remodelling HG zones should be possible from historical data. My question about mined-out areas was accounted for by the resource modellers who adjusted their density calcs for voids and backfill.
There's also lots of fresh vein targets but I couldn't find the RC drilling results for the Wolf target which one of the previous owners undertook. One question is how much the ounces will drop from the existing res when redefined with a higher cut off for UG mining. If they can maintain 3g/t Au and some Ag there's about 200 USD per ton with current prices. Process capex will be lighter with lower t/put and opex too, but higher exploration costs to refurb all the adits etc. A quick estimate @ 3g/t gives about 150Koz in the newly drilled area, open at depth. Another such + redefined existing resource + the current 43koz UG res will firm this up a lot IMO. Lower capex means less overall ozs are needed to make economically viable. The OP PFS was 1.5Mtpa with 42Mt of waste rock and 14Mt tailings over LOM, an UG processor could be 500Ktpa t/put with little waste rock and about 5Mt tailings (assuming same LOM). If the grades are consistent across the whole system, then this will be very attractive.
Heaps of potential, main risk atm is exploration and associated financing I reckon, the new non-cyanide mets look fine. This is the main reason I would think institutional money isn't backing this on market yet, MTC will need to show their full hand as a whole package and project direction to raise the dough, drill more targets, and get the SS done. The historical OP PFS is not worth much unfortunately, on which the 1Moz res is more or less based, and both are therefore not a selling point to serious investors at this moment in time. "Comprehensive project stakeholder engagement programmes" aren't going to lower that risk in this sense. A redefined UG global resource including new drilling, on the other hand, will get fresh eyeballs.
Anyway that's just my thinking as of 25/2/21. Happy to be contradicted.
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