And here's the price of copper over that same 1500 day period...

And here's the price of copper over that same 1500 day period (roughly).


It's very easy to spin a story around the SP to whatever theme you want, but I think slagging off at holders for picking a dud stock is just mean-spirited, no matter how eloquently put. Clearly the SP has failed to meet expectations for all concerned. Thanks for pointing that out, I hadn't noticed. Yes, the bears have been right so far, but NONE have had the correct rationale for their position. It wasn't management quality (that's actually been proved outstanding in a real pressure cooker environment, no one else has production coming on line). It wasn't the resource modelling was dodgy (they're getting better grades than foreseen...and as stated many times, for the hard of hearing/seeing, AN is open at depth and nobody knows how far down it goes, but at least 100m). Quite simply, the economy/commodity market went to pot, PoC fell like a stone. That meant :

• profitability was knee-capped: I said in a post the other day with the PoC at $2.20-ish we are earning about 1/3rd what we would when it was $3.50. There's your clear standout reason why we aren't $0.20-plus right now.
• financing capacity dried up: lending doors were closed while banks licked wounds and generally got the jitters. So equity it is. Yes, SOI has expanded. But instead of fewer shares in something worth very little (imagine, just for a moment, being an explorer still today and with no revenue in sight for several more years...where do you think the SP would be in that scenario? Would we even still be listed?), we have more SOI but a producing asset and more to come.

To put it another way, if PoC had held in the $3's, everything else panned out as expected, so we'd be laughing right now.

But here's the thing: even though we are in the doldrums with PoC, we are still cashflow positive. We are massively de-risked. We are leveraged to a recovery in the PoC. And in the meantime, production capacity is going to be grown (with appropriate consideration of risk), and resources and reserves expanded through further exploration of many highly prospective targets.

So the decision for holders to make is this: where do you think the PoC is heading? This is all that matters because it effects everything. First, our bottom line is directly impacted, roughly 3:1 ratio (that is, 10% change in PoC is around 30% change in earnings). Secondly, it drives business plans - if the price starts to rise, confidence will grow, and watch the brakes come off mine development; if it hangs low for a while, then a more conservative approach will also prolong, and production expansion will be slower. That's all there is to it - the PoC. The truth is, nobody really knows what PoC is going to do. But you've got to form a view, otherwise you're wasting time and should go invest elsewhere. I think it will turn, and we will see over the next few years a recovery. But I could be wrong in direction and/or timing. That's my view, and why I'm still in. You may decide differently, which is of course fine.

So let's drop the "I told you so" posts because nobody got it right. AC - you had your other copper punt and that did poorly too. We've all been humbled. If someone takes a longer view than you or me, who cares? That's their decision.

What I would like to see more of is peoples views on PoC.