btu goes green on a very red day, page-2

No probs Pennynut.

Coal is hot, particularly coking coal, so it was just a matter of time. Notwithstanding the pending placement of shares the market cap was way too low to justify sitting on the sidelines until the placement was finished. In any case I thought that there would be massive demand for the placement. Often brokers will give clients part of what they want and tell them to buy the rest on market in that situation, so hopefully that is what we are seeing.

Current spot prices for coking coal are pushing up to $200/tonne (USD). So even a 1mtpa operation is a huge cash cow. Particularly if open cut and close to infrastructure. I haven't looked into it too much, but I would also imagine that infrastructure constraints in NZ are much less than in Australia.

Compare BTU to NEC for example. NEC are looking at production of between 500k tpa to 1mtpa (coking coal). Similar sized resource, but to be mined by underground mining. Still 1-2 years away from production. Resources are JORC (mostly inferred - lowest category). NEC's issue will be getting output through the bottlenecks in Queensland and onto a boat. NEC however already have an offtake in place, further funding and own theirs 100%. NEC's market cap - a handy $200m compared to BTU's $30m (although we still don't know BTU's exact earn-in).

Not without some risks though. We have already seen some dilution with this placement of 125m shares meaning today's market cap is closer to $30m. Given they were at 8c as reported on here, we may see some short-term profit taking by some of those that got the cheap shares. Of course, most brokers will try to place them to friendly parties in for the long term and as discussed above get anyone that missed out to buy on market. The other factor is the terms of JV/acquisition, which we are still to see. No doubt it was contingent on the recent capital raising. Shouldn't be too dilutionary at this point given it was stated as a JV first leading to ultimate acquisition. We can probably expect an announcement on the terms any day now.