Bendigo(BDG) is an excellent gold company IMHO, Cash cost...

[U]Bendigo[/U]
(BDG) is an excellent gold company IMHO, Cash cost estimated <150USD grade 14gt (underground) and massive inferred reserves to market CAP. Plus completely un-hedged!
Quite large market cap for my liking at 890mil AUD but the fundamentals are all there.
With an inferred resource at 11mill oz, if they get this proved up the gold is worth more than 800% of the market cap. My opinion is that this is a good stable prospect for the long term. Note that from what I can see probable reserves are only listed at 0.2 mill oz. I am sure this will change as the area has produced 22 mill oz in the past. Plus they plan 120,000 oz per year as a start with 600,000oz per year as a target once they have two mines running. The other good thing about Bendigo is that they are not hundreds of miles away from major towns like a lot of Australian gold producers. (2h drive from Melbourne)

[U]Comparison - Bendigo and Tanami [/U]
OK, let’s make some basic comparison between Bendigo and Tanami the only two totally un-hedged Australian near term producers:
Tamani’s current market cap is 170M AUD compared to Bendigo at 885M AUD that’s 1/5th. Yet the first 3 years of production from Bendigo is planed to be about 120,000 oz verses 60,000oz from Tanami.

So for Bendigo you get one once of production for every $7,375 AUD of M/cap compared to Tamami you get one once of production for every $2,850 AUD of M/cap
And with gold currently over 850 AUD:
• BDG 11.5% gold production $'s to M/cap
• TAM 30% gold production $'s to M/cap
So looking purely at M/cap production Tanami is looking quite good.

Cash cost - Bendigo is reported a very low estimated cash cost for underground mining of 150USD compared to Tanami open pit estimate of 260USD, why the big difference I’m not sure but lets used the numbers, same as above but with cash costs removed from gold price:
• BDG 120k oz x $600 = $72M / 885M M/cap = 8.1% Cash to M/cap
• TAM 60k oz x $500 = $30M / 171M M/cap = 17.5% Cash to M/cap

In the above case Tanami still comes out better. Also Tanami plans to get to 100,000oz P/A in 1 year.

I think Bendigo who plan to have 600,000oz of production in 6 years may be a very good longer term pay, If gold is still charging ahead then? I am tempted to get some Bendigo shares also to balance things out, but for Now I think Tanami is the better of the two. (see my other posts on Tanami)
:)