Fundamentals & Near-Term Cashflow

Lotsa work Mr Pell, well done.
Have you considered running that past the CEO and asking for a response?
They are not big on commentary (understatement) but I don't see why he couldn't validate that even in general terms.

@chinaplate I will give it ago. The mainthing I want to see is confirmation of net cashflow from Boorara before the next quarterly report. Maybe we will see another mining operations update type announcement soon, but the latest presentation does imply "inflection point for steady cash flow generation" has been reached with "steady state gold production".

Speaking of, I would like to provide an update in relation to the recent investor presentation:

• Highlights in bold font that the Boorara cashflow expectation of ~A$30 M is based on A$3,600 per ounce and that the spot price is currently above A$5,000 per ounce. Per my previous calculations, if average AISC is around ~A$3000 per ounce we can expect Boorara to generate circa A$100 M.
• Timeline shows Boorara gold production to be finished by Q2 2026 in line with my expectations. Mining of the ore will be finished before than and we should expect 3 to 6 months of runoff processing which could delay revenue. However, this still means we effectively have 5-quarters (including the current one) to realize the circa A$100 M in cashflow, implying A$20 M in cashflow per quarter on average.
• States optionality for initial 1.0 to 1.5 Mtpa throughput at Black Swan, with first gold production from Black Swan before end of 2026 and over 1 M ounces in gold resources proximal to the plant. This confirms my timeline to commissioning and expected throughput of 1.2 Mtpa.
• Regarding the expected 1.2 Mtpa throughput from Black Swan in late 2026, I estimated this would value the company at NPV10 A$490 M and Grant confirmed this a recent interview: "there is probably a four or five multiple gap between us and other producers".

One thing not mentioned, which I picked up in an interview from a month ago, is that it costs "$25 to $30 per ounce" to process the ore. This has enabled me to determine the the AISC more accurately. Deducting the processing cost for the 50,000 tonnes of ore processed, the bulk mining cost for the 180,000 tonnes reported is $62 per ton. Adding the processing fee, that is $89 per ton of gold ore mined and processed.

This would imply the following relationship between AISC and grade (roughly):


They are now processing ore above 0.9 g/t and moving towards an average of 1.24 g/t per the resource estimate, noting that grade is improving with depth. Therefore, I am comfortable to keep working with AISC circa A$3,000 per ounce for my high-level cashflow estimates.