Pretty hard to justify an early div IMO when there's that $20M debt plus a $320M-odd bill for Little Eva in the works.
If they did declare a div, it would be a strategic move to try and get the SP up.
And since this is AOH we're talking about, it would backfire and the SP would end up down 20% anyway.
Not sure how much capacity for a div they'd have anyway. That C1 cash cost of $1.69 is disappointing, but probably unavoidable given the rising costs of development overseas as well as in Australia.
As a low-volume mine, margin needs to be as high as possible to make decent money. It was supposed to be $1.33/lb so they are almost 30% higher than forecast.
Unfortunately I doubt we're going to see $1.33 here, at best I'd hope for incremental improvement to around $1.50.
AOH Price at posting:
23.5¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held