re: gym hedging - for angus Angus, thank you for the hedging...

re: gym hedging - for angus Angus, thank you for the hedging info.
I looked into Gympie's hedging and found the following information on Risk Management. A fairly sound and relative conservative policy for a company with the usual pain of growing.
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In order to mitigate financial risk during its current rapid growth phase, the Company has adopted the following risk management practices:

Sharing mine development and operating risks with suitably qualified contractors, Thiess at Southland Coal and Roche at Gympie Eldorado;
Using increasing levels of medium to long-term debt as operating risk stabilises and raising equity capital to maintain an appropriate gearing level; and
Hedging product revenues in $A to support cost commitments of four years for gold and about one year for coal.
Some hedging is seen as necessary insurance and the general rationale of our hedging policies is to protect the company's exposure where a change in product pricing would be damaging, but to leave upside potential unhedged as much as practical. Gold revenue received (including by-product credits) for 2001-02 was $A573 per ounce, exceeding the average spot gold price of $A552 for the year.

Our gold hedging policy is to sell forward enough gold to cover operating costs and committed capital expenditure. Such costs are covered to 30 June 2006, with the forward sales of 209,100 ounces at an average net price of $A526 per ounce.

Only 28% of Mineral Resources at Gympie Eldorado are subject to price caps (hedging commitments) - down from 51% at 30 June 2000 and 40% at 30 June 2001. The remaining 72% and all additional gold discovered is fully exposed to gold price movements.

Our coal hedging policy is to lock in sufficient $A/$US forward sales to cover approximately 12 months of production. Between 1 July 2002 and 31 August 2002 the Company put in place additional currency hedging in line with this policy and thereby increased forward cover from $US6.5 million at an $A/$US rate of 0.63 to $US47.7 million at an $A/$US rate of 0.55.

Our realised $A coal price for 2002/03 should be approximately 15% more than 2001-02 due to the combination of stronger $US prices for our coal products and a lower $A/$US exchange rate.